2008 | POSTER ILLUSTRATING A REASON TO VOTE FOR BARACK OBAMA | CLIENT: 30REASONS.ORG

Emerging Talent No. 15: The Heads of State
Jason Kernevich and Dustin Summers met in Philadelphia in Tyler School of Art’s design program, formed a partnership called The Heads of State, and within a few years of graduating from school began gaining notoriety for their simple-but-graphic screen-printed posters. Mostly created for local concert promoters, these posters led to various design awards and clients, allowing The Heads of State to expand into a full-service design and illustration studio. The duo have since done projects for clients such as Penguin, Random House, the School of Visual Arts, bands like R.E.M. and Wilco, and publications including The New York Times, Esquire, SPIN and The Boston Globe.

“Somehow they are bicoastal partners, with Jason formerly in Philadelphia, currently in Brooklyn, and Dusty in Seattle. These two hugely creative dudes manage to produce extraordinary work,” says Frank Baseman, principal of Baseman Design Associates and associate professor of Graphic Design at Philadelphia University. “I don’t quite know how they do it, but they manage to still work very closely together, even though time zones apart, producing some of the freshest, most interesting and exciting work I have seen in a long time.”

They have been referred to as “Art Chantry meets Saul Bass,” with work that straddles the realms of design and illustration. “Our work is about simplicity,” says Kernevich. “The ideas and the direct way we deliver them to a client or audience is most important to us. Providing a look and feel that further eases the delivery of the message is secondary.” Kernevich and Summers certainly have a style they work around. “We like 1960s graphic design and illustration both from American and European artists,” explains Kernevich. “We like visuals that don’t easily reveal how they were made, and we want our work to function the same way. Most things we do fuse handmade elements with the digital medium to make something that feels as clean as it does worn and cherished.”

“To me, their work has a certain gorgeous simplicity and sparse complexity to it at the same time,” notes Baseman. Not satisfied with style-driven solutions alone, The Heads of State develop strong concepts in their work. “The problem-solving aspect is what keeps us interested,” says Kernevich. “We both enjoy simple and smart visual communication. Finding the simple solution is a daunting challenge we enjoy. Although it can be a painful process at times, when it works it is tremendously rewarding.”

Asked what’s next, Kernevich replies, “We’ve been developing a lot of our own projects lately … book ideas, art prints and a series of political posters. We’ll continue to juggle our design and illustration projects while creating content for other self-authored works.”
www.theheadsofstate.com