¡El Movimiento Vivo!

¡El Movimiento Vivo!:
Chicano Roots of
el Día de los Muertos

at Oakland Museum of California

ROLE: lead graphic designer

SCOPE: branding, timeline 2D+3D design, product consultation, hierarchy / label system, typesetting, consultant

 

¡El Movimiento Vivo! focused on the history of Día de los muertos in California as a legacy of celebration and activism. Bilingual and tightly constrained, this show featured artifacts and newly-commissioned artworks alongside personal stories.

Limitations imposed for this show were multifold. To ease installation efforts, I developed panels of information which were overlaid with objects and highlighted by titling and quotes. Colors were drawn from existing items of the time period. Typography included the dictated use of Knockout — which I modified in the exhibition identity — and paired with Freight and Freight Sans to differentiate languages further down in the hierarchy. Commissioned illustrations by Ven Voisey taught a remembrance activity without the need for words.

Full translations were keyed to each section, and developed alongside the space design artfully.

The tone of the show was hope, pride, justice, and reverence.

Onsite banner advertising, featuring branded collage, typography, and textures. Images of a procession of skeleton-painted celebrants are juxtaposed with images from a march for farmer's rights on a textured golden yellow background, with the exhibit
Section panel close-up: "Chicanos reclaim their identity." Red panel topped with bilingual headlines and dynamic artifact layouts on a light blue wall. Photo © OMCA by Odell Hussey.
Poster-brochure for 2019 community celebration event. Produced intensely quickly. Poster is light blue with waving shaped texts of the event name, dates, and offerings above a collage of celebrants and activists, flanked by yellow exclamation points
El Movimiento Vivo lead-in wall, section, and subsection panels with object and text details. Lead-in wall features an inverted and typical exclamation point flanking two historical photos. Several people are reading text on red panels and looking
Part 1 of the exhibition featured the story of the Chicano roots of the holiday, supported by artifacts. Image shows a central ofrenda of four artifacts facing cardinal directions, with personal stories attached to each object. People are milling a
Subsection panel layout. A bright blue panel holds reproductions of photos and flyers describing and illustrating the importance of Self-Help Graphics in establishing a Día de los muertos celebration in L.A, along with curatorial headlines, text, and
Brand guide, first page. A list of evocative words representing the exhibit and intentions create a left-hand column, with colors at the base. The remaining 3/4 of the page includes text samples in two languages, the logotype, and inspirational image

Vibrant and alive

 

For over ten years, I’ve been designing the Oakland Museum of California’s annual Día de los muertos-oriented exhibitions. It has been incredibly rewarding and challenging to learn about and honor the cultures through choices that support artist and curatorial intentions. For ¡El Movimiento Vivo!, the focus was on brilliant activism and the art inspired by the movement to take pride in ones’ heritage.

The word vivo means alive, clever, and intense. These words dictated strong brand colors that hearkened back decades to the movement’s inception. The leathery cardstock texture added depth and familiarity to collaged images and newspaper-adjacent typography. These contextual clues assist the viewer in recognizing the historical stories and tap into the feelings from those eras.

¡El Movimiento Vivo! logotype

 

The mark for ¡El Movimiento Vivo! is a customized treatment of Knockout, with variations for stacked, horizontal, all Spanish, and superwide. Using historical artifacts as inspiration, I added movement, tradition, and flavor to a lockup that prominently features an inverted exclamation point and an extensive subhead.