Year

Project

Copy Machine Manifestos: Artists Who Make Zines

Client

Brooklyn Museum

New York

Type

  • Exhibition
  • Identity
  • Print

Case study

A zine can be a manifesto, a dirty joke, or a way of telling someone to fuck off in print. The photocopier doesn’t object.

Copy Machine Manifestos brought five decades of this activity into the Brooklyn Museum, from the artist correspondence scene of the 1970s to the present. For work with an anti-institutional streak, becoming the subject of a museum exhibition is a fairly awkward compliment. The labels still have to be legible.

The design draws on desktop-publishing type and early zine layouts. The work follows the exhibition from street posters and the façade banner into murals, section panels, and labels. A custom-designed mobile zine-making station gave visitors somewhere to answer back.

Wild postings
1
Wild postings
Façade banner
2
Façade banner
Digital screens, lobby
3
Digital screens, lobby
Entrance
4
Entrance
Mural, entrance
5
Mural, entrance
Entrance
6
Entrance
Introduction
7
Introduction
Introduction
8
Introduction
Section panel
9
Section panel
Mural
10
Mural
Section panel
11
Section panel
Label
12
Label
Section panel
13
Section panel
Mural
14
Mural
Section panel
15
Section panel
Section panel
16
Section panel
Signage
17
Signage
Mural
18
Mural
Acknowledgments
19
Acknowledgments
Mobile zine creation station
20
Mobile zine creation station
Select zines to seed mobile zine creation station
21
Select zines to seed mobile zine creation station