40. BRALEY DESIGN
Michael Braley believes in type big-time—as his big, bold posters illustrate. This poster advertises a two-day typography workshop at Kansas’ Wichita State University. Braley based his assignment on typography hierarchy on a simple playing-card exercise.

“Each student was assigned five playing cards, which we dealt out randomly,” he begins. “On the first card, the suit had to be the dominant typographic element. For the second card, the rank— jack, queen, two—dominated. Students had to write a paragraph relating to the third card. So if I pulled a jack of spades I had to use ‘jack’ and ‘spades’ somehow in a design.” The fourth and fifth cards were, of course, the wildcard designs, allowing the students free reign with their cards’ visual elements.

“The poster can be read from either direction, just like a playing card,” notes Braley. He redrew an unnamed 1920s typeface for this purpose and dubbed it Marquee. Dominik D’Angelo, his oncampus coordinator, loved the poster’s combined size and wit. “When I first saw his PDF I thought it was smart, simple, and clever,” she recalls. “A few weeks later when I unrolled a poster, my reaction was: ‘Wow, it’s huge!’ The poster caused immediate excitement.” Jude Stewart