(TOP) LEFT: OCCIDENTAL REGULAR is a text-face in progress, shown here in a specimen poster. This face was developed as something that could be functional rather than decorative with applications in a wide range of fields. Corey wants this typeface to make a contribution to the field of design/typography rather than adding ornamental detritus. MIDDLE: SUCCESS WILL RUIN EVERYTHING, a screenprinted poster for the CALARTS graphic design department 2005 exhibition. Corey describes it as “An honest look at our profession and our places within it, expressing our fear of unrealized potential and the compromise that commercialism brings.” A Collaboration with LQ. RIGHT: A work of some aesthetic and spiritual value, POSTER. “This grew out of a discussion in which the notion of ‘aesthetic and spiritual value’ was raised,” says Corey. “I realized that this was all I have strived to achieve.” He has since expanded this alphabet to include the full character set, numerals, and punctuation in a font called fortress.BOTTOM: This formal exercise, in which each tiny element was painstakingly composed, eventually formed the basis of the 2005 CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF THE ARTS JAZZ CD.

Ryan Corey Latin Name: Youcanthippydancewithclotheson,,,,,man Age: 30 213.484.2172 | www.calarts.edu/~rcorey

Ryan Corey keeps his old design work in a secret room formerly used for bootlegging liquor. When he climbs through the false mirror in his living room to reach it, an odd procession of pieces tumbles out: posters, original typefaces, books, and an oscillator (an electronic amplifier that emits a wavering wail). An affinity for sound is made obvious by the towers of CDs (some of which he designed) that line Corey’s walls, as is an obsession with the way things work (a poster he made explains a record player’s mechanics), but an oscillator? Corey shrugs. “I just made it.” Such experimental fabrication was nurtured at CalArts, where Corey says he was encouraged to solve problems in a way that might not have always nodded toward his graphic design curriculum. “He’s a designer-as-producer,” says his former professor Michael Worthington. “His self-initiated projects are heading toward a more contemporary practice.”

Many of Corey’s projects are production intensive. When he created posters to promote a three-day concert at CalArts, for example, he took them down each night and rescreened them to promote the next evening’s event. In most of his work, Corey meticulously develops a “vocabulary of forms,” designing original type that, to him, serves the grandest purpose in design: “I like to make typefaces because I like to make things that are useful.” He currently collaborates with The Society of Imagemakers, a group of CalArts grads working on a book based on the journals of Lewis and Clark. He talks about continuing his studies at the Werkplaats Typografie in the Netherlands and bemoans the state of design in the U.S. “Design in America is not useful. It’s just style to make money, and that annoys me,” says Corey. An all-type black-and-white poster on top of his stack is a fitting caption: “I just wasn’t made for these times.”
Alissa Walker