Alexander Bohn

Space Rocks Poster

2007-11-20T10:38:47Z

Poster commissioned by Bryan Boyer and Asia GSD for a conference in which non-architects of all stripes — graphic designers, artists, publishers, et cetera — talked about how they talk about space, and the nature of the conveyance of spatial issues.

Posters were printed at both 30x44” and 17x25” (HP i1 inkjet on generic heavyweight matte paper).

In their brief, Bryan and Asia GSD specifically indicated that the desired aesthetic was “something between Metallica and Star Wars,” which is quite possibly the awesomest thing you could ask for me to do, as a designer.

I drew the AC/DC-esque type myself; the body copy is a mix of Jonathan Barnbrook’s Bastard and the ITC version of Johnston Underground.

Pleated Pritzker Prize

2007-09-24T05:25:23Z

Pleated copy of the program from the 2000 Pritzker Prize award ceremony. Edition of one.

In her book Folding Architecture, Sophia Vyzoviti cites S,M,L,XL as “the most influential unexecuted project of the 90’s” to operate accordng to both the theoretical and practical axioms laid out by Giles Deleuze in his essay Folding in Architecture, originally published by Greg Lynn’s eponymous issue of Architectural Design Profile.

To fashion this chain of citations into a closed loop in the most literal fashion, I detached each page from a found copy of the Pritzker Prize award ceremony program, and applied to each page one of Vyzoviti’s iterative pleat techniques, as illustrated in Folding Architecture.

Photograph by g. a. carafelli.

CCA Lecture Series Brochure

2007-09-23T07:02:04Z

Pleat-folded brochure for a putative lecture series by the Canadian Centre for Architecture. Each pyramidal unit contains the information for one lecture; the joints between the units are perforated, so that they may be individually detached to serve as a one-off reminder for the event in question.

Photographs by g. a. carafelli.

Live Video Performances

2007-09-12T13:59:15Z

VJing is still a young art — it’s only been practiced in its current form for about five years, versus turntablism, which has been around since 1977. As such, the lack of convention in VJ practice is a double-edged sword. Newer software allows anyone with a laptop to queue up a bunch of low-grade video clips, right from the dregs of their hard drive, and sync them with a beat. That’s not to suggest that one needs to write their software from scratch to do a good job; there are plenty of VJs who tweak and twaddle their Jitter patches to within an inch of their life (as it were), never noticing the supreme lack of entertainment written all over the collective faces of their audience.

One large problem with having video as a component of a music performance is manner in which it acts as a totalizing visual focal point. This is a function of the medium: CRT tubes and LCD projectors were designed to be stared at. My live video work is composed of nonrepresentational elements: fields of color built up by moving planar shapes across one another, analog video feedback created in the performance space, and the natural lighting and shade that one finds in the performance spaces themselves.

Figure 1: Feedback loop projected on double glass doors from outside, at Bar Reis, in Park Slope, in the spring of 2004.

Figure 2: Stills from a live video performance at the RIVAA gallery, on Roosveldt Island, in the spring of 2002.

Official

2007-08-06T17:54:51Z

Self-commissioned small inkjet run (Ultrachrome on Staples photo matte paper). The design was also screenprinted on shirts; edition of three.

Unofficial

2007-08-06T17:53:38Z

Self-commissioned small inkjet run (Ultrachrome on Staples photo matte paper). The design was also screenprinted on shirts; edition of three.

Liquid Truthiness

2007-08-06T11:57:20Z

Smythe-sewn book with exposed binding, approximately 9” x 12” x 1”, edition of one. Covers are Ultrachrome inkjet on raw davey board.

Produced as the summation of my primary project for RISD GD Graduate Studio 1, Liquid Truthiness ultimately presents a series of word histograms. These histograms were generated by infusing the NodeBox visualzation framework with the NLTK natural language library, Rockwell Bold Italic, and a great deal of text on the subject of reading and eating.

The text in question was harvested entirely from a survey I administered to my studiomates and peers. Although the use of surveys is common practice for graduate-level research projects at RISD, frequently, students handing out surveys have to contend with lackluster enthusiasm from their subjects; not to mention the receipt of only a smattering of pithy returns for the trouble.

I circumvented this problem by presenting my survey as a raffle contest. Each of two randomly chosen survey subjects received a handmade small book. These books were aproximately 5” x 3.75” x 2.5”. They were designed to conceal a central hollow cavity, the right size and shape for an single-serving (2 oz) bottle of Jack Daniels… a reference to Flannery O’Conner’s infamous short story.

The prospect of this prize tempted most of my peers, including several non-drinkers. This gave me a large enough data set to overcome basic statistical hurdles. Once processed with the NLP library and visualized with the NodeBox drawing API, the words and phrases people employed to discuss reading could be seen as distinct from, yet clearly related to, the words and phrases people used to talk about eating.

These results were quite nifty, supported as they were by colorful charts and graphs, powerful software, and the like. Arguably, they were also total rubbish. I happened to encounter “Wonders Revealed: Design and Faux Science”, an essay by Jessica Helfland and William Drenttel, during the production of Liquid Truthiness. I was rather flummoxed when I realized that my entire endeavor smacked of the sort of pseudoscience outlined by Helfland and Drenttel. Fortunately, I caught my error, and I was able to revise the tome to explicitly address the subjectivity of the data it had been engendered to support and portray.

Photographs by g. a. carafelli.

Journalism Panel Poster

2007-08-06T07:48:34Z

Poster for a panel discussion, hosted by David Sokol and featuring Grace Bonney (of Design*Sponge) and Jude Stewart. 22x24.5” digital print (Ultrachrome inkjet on selected pages from one copy of the New York Times).

Photographs by g. a. carafelli.

Crypto-Anarchism Poster

2007-08-06T07:48:34Z

Poster for a lecture on cypherpunks, crypto-anarchism, and civil disobedience. A2/A4 digital inkjet print (Ultrachrome ink on Red River “Zepplin” semimatte).

The practical use of asymmetric encryption requires that ones’ public key be ubiquitously available — a requirement as stringent as the need for the absolute secrecy of ones’ private key. This fact drove the decision to build up the posters’ background texture from the ad nauseum repetition of the presenters’ public key fingerprint.

This poster uses the same vector/pixel hybrid typeface as the Philipe Apeloig ripoff.

Branch Monoline

2007-08-02T05:25:03Z

Monoline typeface design, with some minimalist Art Deco hints, and a separate baseline for capitals and lowercase characters.

Initially, I only drew the characters I needed to make a business card and letterhead for a friend. I originally based the design off of a typeface employed on the letterhead of a West Village bar called Little Branch, but I was missing most of the character set, and I had to add plenty of embellishments. I enjoyed the process so much that I finished out the entire character set, and I am in the process of creating a suite of weights.

Gusset

2007-08-02T05:18:57Z

Decorative typeface design, insprired by the harshly angular shapes seen in the construction of truss bridges.

Gusset is free to download:

Gusset has been released under an Open Source license, such that its content can be freely modified and distributed, with some restrictions. See the enclosed license file for details.

About This Series

2007-07-06T15:11:19Z

The “I AM TOTALLY RIPPING YOU OFF” exhibition is an object lesson in intellectual property. Originally inspired by a piece by Laura Dapito of the same name, it currently consists of over 30 posters of varying dimensions. Each poster, or group of posters, recreates the signature graphical and typographical aesthetic of an artist, a designer, or collective or firm. These recreations subsitute the words “I AM TOTALLY RIPPING YOU OFF” in place of the original words of the works that they target.

An article I wrote on the subject was published on the design blog SpeakUp.

“I AM TOTALLY RIPPING YOU OFF” was most recently exhibited in May of 2007, in the foyer of the CIT building (née “Mason”) at the Rhode Island School of Design.

About This and Myself

2007-07-06T14:48:08Z

I’m Alexander Bohn, and I am a graphic designer. Currently, I am located in Metro Boston, and I am available for freelance work. From kerning to folding to drafting to coding, I design, define, detail, and direct — with the sort of perspective, consideration, and rigor fostered and tempered by ten years of multidisciplinary design practice.

Don’t take my word for it, though. Have a look for yourself: click on the project names you see in the left-hand column to get an idea of the things I do. Projects on this site have been filed in a hierarchical fashion; clicking on a category (denoted with a triangle) will show or hide its subordinate projects and categories.

If you’re interested in working with me, or you’d like to know more about anything you see here, do let me know.

Some recent projects include:

Space Rocks, a poster for a conference about spatial concerns at the Harvard GSD;
Branch Monoline and Gusset, new typeface designs;
I AM TOTALLY RIPPING YOU OFF, a poster exhibition focussing on intellectual property issues; and
Merce.net, an expansive database with a private web interface, for Merce Cunningham Dance Studios.

I also have a resumé available for you.

Resumé

2007-07-06T14:11:27Z

Download my resumé,
in the enduringly charming PDF format;
128 kilobytes.

Education

Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI; graduated Spring 2008
MFA in Graphic Design. Founded the Design Debate Series.

New York University, New York, NY; Graduated Spring 2001
BA from the Gallatin School. Dual foci in neuroscience and digital media.

Skills

Personal: I am a strong leader, a clear communicator, and a cooperative team player. Having managed a wide range of projects in managerial and technical roles, I intuitively address details while considering the larger picture. I detect, utilize, and express critical overarching patterns throughout my workflow.

Design: Fluent in modern design and production systems for web, video, and print — including color management, soft-proofing, prepress, inkjet and laser output, and 3D prototyping. Over 12 years of professional experience with Adobe applications. Thorough understanding of standards-based web design. Proficient in manual and CAD drafting (for architectural and environmental design applications), bookbinding, silkscreening, and other processes.

Computer: Fluent in any contemporary environment, from Apple to zSeries. Exhaustive knowledge and experience with web application development and lifecycle management, schema development for relational and non-relational database systems, legacy systems integration, and more.

Work Experience

Merce Cunningham Dance Studios, New York, NY; 2006 - 2007
Designed and implemented a standards-based web interface to an RDBMS containing MCDC’s enormous digital archive. Conducted usability studies with studio administrators. Trained staff members in the use of the new system.

Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI; Winter 2006
Co-taught a studio class on the development of web portfolios. Introduced basic web and programming concepts. Mentored students through the design and deployment of a functional site.

Vidvox, Troy, NY; 2004
Developed an identity system for Vidvox. Supervised its deployment across the Vidvox line of realtime video software products, website, manuals and support materials, and marketing collateral, as well as web templates and style guides for internal use. Led a team of developers through interface overhauls and usability testing.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Arts Department, Troy, NY; 2002 - 2004
Managed and implemented several new websites for the RPI Arts department and community, along with infrastructural support for the Arts departments’ information architecture. Conducted usability studies with staff. Established new graphic identity standards for use in web and print communications.

Selected Exhibitions

I AM TOTALLY RIPPING YOU OFF: Iterative solo exhibitions at (respectively) the RISD Sol Koffler foyer space and the RISD Graphic Design Gallery; Providence, RI; Spring 2007 and 2008

Graphics Design in the White Cube: Solo interactive poster exhibition at RISD Graphic Design Gallery; Providence, RI; Spring 2008; the “s” in “Graphics” is not a typo

Continuum: Participant and curator for graduate design exhibition at RISD Sol Koffler Gallery; Providence, RI; Fall 2007

Synaesthesiologists: Entrant in juried video festival at the Lincoln Center Walter Reade Theater; New York, NY; Spring 2004

F:T:H: Multi-channel live video performance at the Remote Lounge, New York, NY; Fall 2003

Evidence: Live video performance at the Roulette Performance Space, New York, NY; Spring 2002 (with Evidence and Cap’n Entropy)

Wired: Entrant in juried exhibition at the Cesar Chavez Gallery; San Francisco, CA; Spring 02

Selected Bibliography

“Ffffantastic Bookmarking”: SpeakUp, May 2007

“Intellectual Property and Whatnot”: SpeakUp, May 2007

“On ‘Just’, Awesomeness, and TM”: SpeakUp, May 2007

“The 2006 National Design Triennial”: 2+3D, June 2007 issue (forthcoming)

“Influences: A Crossmodal Trainwreck”: 2+3D, June 2007 issue (forthcoming)

“Public Relations and Bullshit”: RISD Architecture/Public Relations, November 2006

Selected Awards

Rhode Island School of Design: Dean’s List, 2004 - 2007
Fusedspace Competition: Finalist; tied for fifth place, July 2004
Wired Magazine: HotWired “Geek of the Week”, November 1997

Contact Information

2007-06-29T17:59:10Z

Alexander Bohn

113 East Manning Street
Third Floor
Providence, RI
02906

+1 401 556 5145

alexander,
at objectsinspaceandtime,
dot com