RCA grad show identities created from woodblock typefaces

Giulia Garbin and Jack Llewellyn have designed the identity for the Royal College of Art’s 2014 graduate shows programme by using woodblock typefaces from the College’s Letterpress studio.

School of Design
School of Design

The designers worked with the RCA’s Letterpress and Lithography technician Ian Gabb to produce six different typefaces, with each one representing a different faculty.

School of Fine Art
School of Fine Art

Alongside Gabb, the team of designers restored and redrew missing or damaged characters so that the words ‘Show RCA-2014’ could be completed in each font.

School of Architecture

The RCA says the identity system ‘captures the tactility and non-uniformity of the analogue printing process.’

School of Communication
School of Communication

Each of the six digitised fonts represents the college’s schools – Architecture, Communication, Design, Fine Art, Humanities and Material.

School of Humanities
School of Humanities

For the main body typeface, the designers chose New Rail Alphabet, designed by RCA tutor Henrik Kubel and former acting course director of graphic design, Margaret Calvert.

School of Material
School of Material

Garbin and Llewellyn said, ‘Our aim was to create something simple, bold and vibrant, but subtly constructed around an in-depth system inspired by the dynamic relationship between the students, the College and its history.

‘The technical challenge was designing visual elements based in analogue processes, which we could keep consistent and appropriate across a variety of media without losing the quality of the physical originals.’

Each of the font themes established for the six faculties will be expanded and continued in further applpications in the run-up to the shows.

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  • D Conran November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    Letterpres – Yes!

    Woodblock Type – Yes!

    End Result – Yuk!

  • Steven Works November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    I like it!

    Well done reviving old tools from the past. It’s great that students at a College in the forefront of art and design like the RCA are still keen on finding new ways to use old techniques.

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