Marie Watt Studio
Visual identity
Artists are in business. Any working artist will admit this; it’s non-artists who insist that art, like religion, must somehow be separate from worldly concerns. And while the work may be the largest part of the communicative relationship between artist and patron, but it is not the only part. Olafur Eliasson, who recently installed waterfalls in New York City’s East River, probably understands this best of contemporary artists, who counts a small communications firm among his 50+ employees.
In developing a brand program for the Iroquois sculptor Marie Watt, we sought to follow Mr. Eliasson’s example, albeit at Ms. Watt’s smaller scale. The first principle is clarity: the work must show without external sentiment. Often, designers will seek to “interpret” an artist’s work visually. Ms. Watt, though Native American, is a contemporary artist first and foremost. We framed her work using whitespace and disciplined, austere typography; the same principles we followed in designing her catalogue Almanac.
The second principle is transparency: in developing the content Ms. Watt’s Web site, we adopted the model of the catalogue raissonné. The idea was to show every piece of Ms. Watt’s work we could lay hands on, carefully annotated and generously illustrated. We couldn’t do all of this ourselves, so we had to implement a content management system that her staff could continue to update the site as reproductions surfaced and new work was made. The site also features a complete archive of Ms. Watt’s reviews: good, bad and indifferent. Many of the older pieces never made it onto the Web or have been lost. Part of our charge was developing a system by which older writings could be archived.
The third principle is community: build 1.5 of the site will include a user commenting mechanism and extensive resourced relating to Ms. Watt’s educational and outreach programs. And we also have designed a framework for producing interpretive documents for her larger installations: printed pieces that visitors may take home to extend their relationship to Ms. Watt’s work.
Web site
The index page of Ms. Watt’s Web site features a short biography, complete contact information both for her studio and her dealers, a regularly-updated news column and image showing what she’s working on currently.
Web site, continued
At right, the site’s visitor can navigate Ms. Watt’s oeuvre by conceptual thread; eventually, he will be able to reassemble old shows by checklist. At left is one of the conceptual thread pages; images are large by default and larger still if the visitor clicks on them.
Web site, continued
Layout is clear and rational; at right is her CV; at left, an unabridged archive of critical writings, which will eventually hold every preview, review and interview regarding Ms. Watt’s work without predjudice to a critic’s opinion.
Working papers: letterhead
A basic set of working papers for the studio, executed in one-color lithography and one-color letterpress. Ms. Watt works largely in secondhand wool blankets, a great many of which are pink. For this range, we studied the weaving schemes from several of her blankets and printed the resulting pattern in pink via offset on a 24x36” master page, which we then cut down into letterhead, envelopes, business cards and other pieces, which we re-imprinted by letterpress (again, in one color). The result is at once crafty and austere, with a contemporary nod to traditional robe and blanket designs.
Working papers: envelopes, cards
Envelopes and business cards for Ms. Watt and her employees. Note how the pattern shifts from sheet to sheet.
