DOWD ILLUSTRATION RESEARCH ARCHIVE (DIRA) BRAND IDENTITY SYSTEM

The Dowd Illustration Research Archive (formerly Dowd Modern Graphic History Library) at WashU includes original art and printed material from many fields of popular American pictorial graphic culture. Focusing on 20th-century illustration, the collection includes artists’ working materials, sketches, and original artwork from books, magazines, and advertising. I created the original identity and was excited to evolve the system to focus more on the acronym. I had fun sketching a variety of configurations that show unique letterforms, ligatures, and subtle serif and swash alterations. The system is designed to be extremely flexible for digital, print, and environmental applications.