City of Dust: The Evolution of Burning Man

Designed at the Nevada Museum of Art

Services: Exhibition Graphics, Print Design, Web Graphics, Merchandise

Exhibition Curator: Ann M. Wolfe

Year: 2017 / 2018

Exhibitions rely on objects, images, and words to communicate a story. Knowing this, I believed the font / logo type for City of Dust need to add to that experience as you entered the gallery. An alphabet of letter forms was created based off handwriting found on an archive item (featured below). The type treatment was then used as headers for text panels, case labels, and more.

The campaign appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, online web placements, light pole banners, and greeted passengers as they arrived at the Reno Tahoe airport.

About the Exhibition: For the first time ever, City of Dust, allowed visitors to explore the remarkable story of how the legendary Nevada gathering known as Burning Man evolved through collaborative ritual from humble countercultural roots on San Francisco’s Baker Beach into the world-famous desert convergence it is today. Included were never-before-seen photographs, artifacts, journals, sketches, and notebooks reveal how this temporary experimental desert city came to be—and how it continues to evolve. This exhibition traveled the Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum in 2018.