ADVERTISING FOR AN EXHIBITION
OTHR was a company started by Joe Doucet in the mid-2010s. The goal was to push the limits of 3D printing. He wanted to create artistic yet functional household objects that could not be created through traditional processes. Furthermore, he wanted these objects to be made-to-order to reduce the risk of overproduction. Each product was designed in collaboration with studios and artists across the world and though the products were sold upwards of $1,600 Doucet had always hoped that 3D printing would become more accessibility so these products could be sold for a cheaper price.
Unfortunately, that never happened. The company would close before the 2020s and donate the collection to the Vignelli Center for Design Studies at Rochester Institute of Technology. In the Spring of 2022, we held the museum studies program at RIT held an exhibition to honor the work that OTHR had done.
Featured above is the typeface Neue Haas Grotesk in the two weights used throughout this project as to align with Vignelli guidelines.
YOU DON'T ALWAYS GET 100%
CREATIVE FREEDOM
CREATIVE FREEDOM
The exhibition was led by Josh Owens from the Vignelli Center. As such, the branding of the exhibit had to tie back to the style guide for the Vignelli Center. My exhibition team was focused on the digital assets and promotion of the exhibition and I was assigned with incorporating the current Vignelli Center branding with our exhibit's unique identity.
Colors from the Vignelli Center for Design Studies style guide. Also utilized throughout the promotional poster.
PICK AND CHOOSE
When it came to creating an identity while still using the Vignelli Center's style guide. I chose to adopt their color palette and typeface choices. This allowed visitors to clearly link the exhibit and the Vignelli Center together but also gave me a little more freedom to create the exhibit's personal assets.
Isometric illustrations of the 10 items displayed at the OTHR exhibition. The first six are rendered with a black background, the last four are rendered with a red background.
A DIFFERENT POINT OF VIEW
The part of OTHR's story that my team really loved was how the company tried to push the boundaries of 3D printing and retail. But back when this company was up and running, there wasn't a huge market for 3D printed items and there was not a large focus on sustainable practices. We wanted to tell that story as much as possible through our advertisements.
As such, the renders we agreed on creating were to be in an isometric perspective. This would give the viewer the feeling that these objects were being heavily observed. The vague figure-ground relationship gave the objects the feeling like they were floating. And their white coloring with subtle shadows made it seem like they were glowing on the page.
Three separate version of the promotional poster, from left to right, oldest to newest.
THE FIRST PASS
Once the first isometric illustrations were completed, I put together three variations of the promotional poster. The grid style was chosen for its clean look and the difference between the three came from the order of the grid. A more patterned look of just three objects felt too limited and didn't give each item the respect it deserved. Taking three blocks of the grid and replacing it with solid colored blocks gave some breathing room but also made it feel too empty. Utilizing all illustrations while also providing a colored pattern background was the right mix of all three.
The final poster for Not Like Any OTHR: Design for Another Time
IT ALL COMES DOWN TO THIS
There were still some edits that needed to be made for the final promotional poster. The first was the addition of the QR code which would lead anyone who scanned it to the website my team had created. Capitalization was also decided instead of the lowercase style utilized beforehand. Lastly, only 8 out of the 10 objects were able to be displayed on the poster so two versions had to be made. This way all objects got the same amount of promotion and draw.