Mailer for MOCA Museum

On January 2024 we visited MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Art) in Downtown LA.  After looking at the pieces of several artists, we chose the one that caught our attention the most.  

Seeing pieces live is a completely different experience than seeing them online.  When they are in your presence, you get the sense of relative proportion plus the impact of real life size and scale;  the power of colors as well as the several textures and the effects of light.

 However, our project was to choose an artist to be featured on MOCA's virtual tours to be seen online, and design a Mailer Card advertising this. 

The piece that caught my attention the most was "Untitled (it's our pleasure to disgust you)", 1991 by Barbara Kruger.  It was a photographic silkscreen on vinyl of very large proportions.

 Barbara Kruger is an American conceptual artist and collagist, mostly known for her, usually,  black and white photographs, overlaid with declarative captions using mostly white-on-red Futura or Helvetica text.  Her most common topics are sexuality and consumerism. 

We submitted 3 different versions of the mailer card, created using Adobe Illustrator and InDesign.  As a premise for the project, asides from the museum logo and the social media icons, only text and shapes could be used. No use of photography was allowed. 

During the course of the class, we went through the Gestalt Principles of Design and these were to be taken into consideration when designing our cards. 

At a broader level, these principles refer to human perception of shapes, elements and patterns. 

Even though visual hierarchy is not specifically one of these principles, it is based in Gestalt psychology as a way in which the human brain organizes elements in a coherent, digestible way.

When it comes to designing material that is meant to transmit a message or call for an action, hierarchy should be one of the main things to consider.   This means deciding what should catch our attention first, what should be our focal point, and how once we are caught in the main message, we navigate through the rest of the information in the order intended, without loosing interest. 

But before we even start designing we have to get acquainted with the rest of the artist's material, as well as who is the audience that is being targeted and will lean on to taking this particular virtual tour. 

On the case of Barbara Kruger, some things were already decided for me. I knew I wanted to use flat, bold colors and the fonts that were called for were Futura or Helvetica, since these are the ones the artist uses on her own work. 

As for the selection of colors, even though the work at the museum didn't necessarily use this scheme, the rest of her work is heavy on black, white and red. 

The focal point on this case should be Barbara Kruger, MOCA, and Virtual MOCA.  The rest of the information would be taken once the viewer is already navigating the image.  Therefore these were the elements I wanted to highlight visually.  I believe that since the artist's name is the only one that uses the background color as a box color and it is not entirely symmetric, it jumps to us first, along with the main logo.  But, even though the two words are separated, being close to each other and having the same treatment helps us group them together. 

Our eyes will also group by color and by the use of similarity for the red boxes for text. 

It was challenging to design a composition that seemed playful but at the same time organized and with a clear reading path.  On my case, being new with this software, the technical aspect of it was also an issue. 

I like the possibilities both Ai and Id offer and I'm looking forward to being more comfortable with them so what I have in mind can translate more accurately. 

As a sort of footnote, the principle of past experience at its most basic level, could be seen on the social media icons.  We all know and are familiar with what a camera looks like or a play button, etc. They are universally understood shapes. For them, we don't need to get into details since our audience would pick it up immediately.