The Post Post

Last night, the folks from Post Typography came to my institution to share their work and some of the experiences they had making it. Although open to the public, the talk was actually this week’s seminar for the Visual Communication students who made up almost the entire audience.

Post is Nolen Strals and Bruce Willen, two Baltimore-based MICA grads who made good by dint of clever off-kilter sensibilities and evidently tireless labor. Although nominally typographers, they generate a wide gamut of graphic products, including illustration and graphic design. I don’t remember seeing advertising. Their regular clients include The New York Times as well as Time and Metropolis magazines.

The theme, in keeping with enterprise’s current obsession with failure as a station stop on the railroad of success, was “Greatest Misses,” and they did a serviceable job of demonstrating how repeated client rejection can feed and nurture the ultimate realization of a much improved version of your initial project. In a few cases they showed dozens of iterations on the same concept as it wended its way through multiple client rejections only to be repurposed for another project and another client, through more rejections, until finally it found a home in print. I do the same thing when I’m enamored of a particular means of expression, and it was vindicating to learn that I’m not just too stubborn to let go.

But the topic of the talk was really a pretext to show the work, some of it quite strong and some less so, but all connected by a spirit of impish subversion. The progression of work followed a roughly chronological arc from the inception of their studio, and their technical growth over the years was evident, although it was also clear they started out knowing more or less what they were about.

One line that Strals threw out at the very end, almost as an afterthought while the crowd was putting on their jackets to leave: [pointing to the now-empty screen] “there’s a lot of color theory in there.” And how! I had been struck by their idiosyncratic color choices and schemes all evening and wanted to know more. Maybe next time.