What do the hippie, punk and Mad Agriculture have in common? The Office of Ordinary Things explains

Mad Agriculture is a rhizomatic organisation, whose name and manifesto are inspired by Wendell Berry’s Mad Farmer poems, advocating for a radical transformation of society and agriculture. They help farmers transition to regenerative agriculture through their branches – Mad Capital, Mad Markets, and Mad Lands. The brand, designed by San Francisco-based design studio The Office of Ordinary Things, reflects their countercultural and hands-on attitude.

‘Mad Ag’ introduced their organisation’s vibe to the team as “hippie meets punk,” and while the two subcultures may not immediately seem interlinked, the team realised that their paths converge in politics. “They’re “mad” in both the “crazy” way and the “angry” way – movements dreaming of and fighting for a better world,” Designer Giorgia Sage tells us. “When we started digging deeper into countercultural history, we discovered a plethora of ephemera from the United Farm Workers movement and the American Agriculture Movement,” they add.

Mad Agriculture – and everything it represents – descends from these lineages, so they formed the foundation of the brand and its visual language, from the image treatments and outspoken graphic forms, to the use of repetition, layering, and rotation to create dynamic and energetic results. And, no doubt, the visual elements of agriculture played a part, too.

The studio devised a ‘path system’ that informed the off-kilter typographic direction.

“Prairie strips are a regenerative agriculture practice whereby farmers plant rewilded strips of native prairie amidst conventional farmland,” Sage explains. “They’re beautiful and striking, and we felt they really embodied Mad Agriculture’s ethos and work, so we wanted to reference them throughout the brand. Typographic orientation and rotation was a countercultural design element we wanted to use, and the prairie strips became the conceptual underpinning. The ‘path system’ is meant to represent the prairie strips and their meandering presence throughout fields.”

After several hours painstakingly evaluating all the modern revivals of Franklin Gothic, the team created a shortlist of four options before agreeing on the ITC version, “because its wonkiness felt the most authentic for the brand,” says Co-founder Jonny Black, while also paying tribute to the punk lineage. Joining the “very wonky” serif is Editorial New as the headline font, adding a pinch of earthy, organic character, while the legible and friendly slab serif Antique No. 6 (by Commercial Type) is used for longer texts.

Black explains that the goal of the colour palette was to avoid the “jewel-toned rainbow palettes” of many environmental and “back-to-the-earth” brands, while maintaining a grounded and natural character. “The palette’s tans, darker green channel that earthiness,” Sage continues. “The brighter tones were inspired by the wildflowers that dot the prairie strips, and also nod to the vivid ink and paper used in countercultural printed ephemera,” they conclude.

The Office of Ordinary Things

Mad Agriculture