The Edit: five projects including Talia Cotton’s generative identity for Guilty by Association

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Poppy Thaxter
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The Edit: five projects including Talia Cotton’s generative identity for Guilty by Association

Each and every day, we're lucky to discover dozens of interesting and inspiring projects from around the world. From global identities and campaigns to side projects and independently published books, The Edit is home to five of them; every two weeks.

The Edit: five projects including Talia Cotton’s generative identity for Guilty by Association
The Edit: five projects including Talia Cotton’s generative identity for Guilty by Association
The Edit: five projects including Talia Cotton’s generative identity for Guilty by Association

GBA (Guilty by Association) is an arts organisation on a mission to give voice to underrepresented artists, empowering them, and in turn, hoping to make the art world more fair and equal. Designers can’t create truly unbiased designs, nor completely avoid prejudice based on their own background. New York-based designer and coder Talia Cotton responded to this with an identity that revolves around an infinitely generative, computer-drawn, human-driven logo. The identity is literally taken out of the biased designer’s hands and can honestly and infinitely represent another person, further serving as a metaphor for each undiscovered, underrepresented artist.

The Edit: five projects including Talia Cotton’s generative identity for Guilty by Association

Serving Sculpture – Renewal of Finnish Craft and Design was an art and design exhibition held as part of Stockholm Design Week 2022; reflecting a new era of Finnish design, gathering works by ten emerging designers. Its collaborative identity, by Tino Nyman and Matilda Diletta, aims to distinguish itself from Nordic design’s conventionally minimalistic, polished and functional aesthetic. A contrast of classy versus playful can be seen in their typeface pairing of Schick Toikka’s Lateral and Scott Vander Zee’s Scotch Genovese. Geometric centrepieces, which are reminiscent of a stage and a spotlight, are unified by a colour palette driven by unexpected warmth and contrast.

The Edit: five projects including Talia Cotton’s generative identity for Guilty by Association

Together with Konrad Knoblauch GmbH, Studio Fabio Biesel were invited to design a temporary exhibition for the Zeppelin Museum in Friedrichshafen, Germany. The interdisciplinary event delves into the close connections of the artists and writers who lived at Lake Constance, and the resulting works created between them. The mutual relationship between literature and art is represented by two overlapping circles and the space that the intersection creates between them. Two circles call to mind the symbiotic interaction of two people. Simple, vibrant and poetic; the intersecting circles are superimposed with paintings, writing, and bold blocks of colour. Within the visual language, the typefaces selected are Dinamo’s Diatype Light and Cormorant Garamond Regular. 

The Edit: five projects including Talia Cotton’s generative identity for Guilty by Association

Morning People is a clean, sustainable and cruelty-free skincare brand for people who want their skin to feel as strong and healthy as their minds can be. Looking for a brand identity that encapsulates their mission, Morning People reached out to Cairo-based designer Mariam Khalifah to create a visual language that connects with conscious and strong-willed people through a mix of bold and soft elements. Enthusiastically aligning with the brand’s values, Khalifah introduced a minimalistic logo and submark to devise a bold typographic pairing that is both strong and sleek. Unifying the design elements is a warm and cool palette inspired by sunrises, mornings and mundane life. Elevated by a youthful and gritty tone of voice, the resulting identity evokes the nostalgia and the authentic feel of what mornings are for people all around the world.

The Edit: five projects including Talia Cotton’s generative identity for Guilty by Association

Held during Melbourne Design Week 2022, Showcase was an exhibition of works by 23 emerging and established practitioners within the Australian contemporary art, craft and design industry. Melbourne-based studio Both were invited to design the identity for Showcase, which sees a contrasting pair of typefaces playfully work together. “We've always loved Kyneton Art Grotesque and had been waiting for a couple of years for the right project to come along to use it…” Both tell us. As the type designer, Dennis Grauel, is local to Melbourne, it was the perfect opportunity. The secondary typeface, Grilli Type’s Alpina Typewriter, is a nod to the diverse work of the exhibition while bringing a complementary personality to the table. Representing the definition of showcase, the exhibition title is encased in a rectangle. Similarly, the choice of putty tones was directly inspired by the floor colour of the exhibition gallery. Completing the identity are silhouetted shapes of the works on show, unifying the pieces as well as providing a visual device to identify them.