A Garbage Year

A 2020 exhibition concept highlighting photojournalistic work covering pandemic-related wastefulness and the articles they accompany. Hosted at the Newseum in Washington, DC.

I decided the identity for A Garbage Year would be centered around a custom display typeface “Garbage” created by crumpling up and distorting print-outs of heavy-weight letterforms. This was paired with clean sans serifs and collected photography from my own accumulated pandemic waste – extra food packaging and disposable masks that now dominate my shopping habits. Throughout the exhibit, color is reserved for the featured photographs, all other imagery is black and white.

The A Garbage Year catalogue is designed as a magazine of the exhibit’s featured articles and photography, interspersed with removable newsprint pages featuring the my (as the curator) reflections on the stories and images created from collected waste.

The scope of this project included mocking up wayfinding and environmental graphics for the exhibit. These are based on possible applications in the Newseum building as it was when the Newseum was still in operation. The building block of the exhibition’s interior design is the featured photo printed large-format in full color with the accompanying article’s text projected, scrolling, on the wall beside the larger than life photo.