https://a-mcquiston.info A. McQuiston Wed, 22 Jun 2022 20:20:04 +0000 https://a-mcquiston.info en https://a-mcquiston.info/Writing-Index Sun, 27 Jun 2021 22:18:18 +0000 A. McQuiston https://a-mcquiston.info/Writing-Index &nbsp; &nbsp; May 2020 The time for typography is not now Read June 2020 Rebranding Fascism Read&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; More soon... &nbsp; https://a-mcquiston.info/Writing-Detail Fri, 25 Jun 2021 15:19:43 +0000 A. McQuiston https://a-mcquiston.info/Writing-Detail ← Back The time for typography is not now May 2020 Three black posters hang together as a triptych on a brick wall, popping boldly from their black background, they make a statement to the viewer through several graphic white forms that flow together, like a snake, to create a single word — “resist.” A word common (and probably) overused since the 2016 election of Donald Trump in the United States. One that feels powerful, yet as a word — or in this instance, a poster — has very little, if any, actual power. As a designer, my reaction to this triptych was one of aesthetic enjoyment, a visceral response to the graphic forms alone. It was a few seconds later, when I made out what word these forms built together, that my feelings quickly shifted to annoyance and disappointment.The designer who made this poster series, was likely responding to the on-going unrest in the United States over the recent killing of George Floyd. Although that may not have been his original intent, it was in the days following large scale Black Lives Matter protests when they subsequently posted a slideshow of three images showing them on Instagram. It was likely posted as a clear statement of support and empathy, and well-intentioned. But what does this serve if is these posters are nearly illegible as a word due to the chosen typographic and formal treatment? The letters are strong, curvy, white forms that, yes, represent type, but firstly act as a visual pattern on a wall. How is this aiding the black community? The average person, walking by this side street, who may glance at these posters for a split second on their way to work or school, likely doesn’t have the time to stop and contemplate the graphic. So the piece itself become performative and limited to the design community. It’s functional statement rendered meaningless. It becomes not a poster on the street, but an Instagram post for designers, liked by designers, commented on by designers alone, world-wide. (The post in question had 539 likes at the time I wrote this). This designer was not alone, and throughout the summer numerous other examples could be found across the platform, including iconic American graphic designer David Carson. In the wake of the murder of George Floyd, and consequent Black Lives Matter protests, many designers and artists took to social media to share their creative output and vocalize their support. This is understandable and I felt the urge to react in a similar manner. Most designs likely asked themselves, what can I design to help? Well, I’d like to argue in opposition. Designers — now is not the time for your typography. It is arguably not the time for your design, art, or creative gesture. Designers and design leaders tend to be very white — according to the 2019 AIGA Design Census, 71% of respondents reported being “White/Caucasan.” The needs of marginalized communities and their voices require to be those heard and listened to most in moments as sad as this. Appending a personal or visual style to a “Black Lives Matter” post, misdirects the narrative from the urgency of this movement, and subsequently diminishes it with ego and personal brand. It is our responsibility to consider deeper ways in which we can offer support beyond an aesthetically pleasing Instagram post. Let us focus on this issues at hand: ongoing and ubiquitous racism and police violence against people of color. In one post that stands out in strong contrast to the above, NYC designer otherwork notes a “refreshingly sensitive response to this moment” in all 1,700 of New York City’s LinkNYC digital displays. Cycling between the names of men and women who have been killed at the hands of police based primarily on the color of their skin, it is the simplicity, clarity, and quietness that make this statement powerful. As otherwork posted, “no gratuitous messaging or visual gimmick. Just the victims of these ceaseless tragedies silently echoing throughout the entire city,” (otherwork Instagram, June 4). It seems the old Mies van der Rohe cliche rings true — less really is more.&nbsp;● 1.)For a wider sample of work including commercial projects, references, and CV, please feel free to get in touch.&nbsp; https://a-mcquiston.info/Bulldozer_in_the_garden Wed, 22 Jun 2022 20:20:04 +0000 A. McQuiston https://a-mcquiston.info/Bulldozer_in_the_garden ← Back to Work Moving Earth May 17, 2022 | excerpt from The Bulldozer in the Garden: Earthmoving &amp; Autonomous Futures In the U.S., the extraction of coal largely shifted from shaft mining to surface mining in the 1960s. This coincided with a rising economy and continued with growing energy supply and security needs. A U.S. Energy Information Administration consumption chart shows that between 1960 and 2008 the amount of coal used for energy production nearly tripled.¹ Advancements in earthmoving equipment motivated an embrace of surface mining, also known as “mountaintop removal.” For the sake of efficiency, expense, and safety, many mining companies began to blast and bulldoze their way to underground coal seams, which are found in horizontal deposits within the layers of the earth. While shaft mines still operate around the world, miners who may have once worked deep underground by flickering headlamps, emerging after long shifts coated in black dust, their lungs lined with the same blackness, now find themselves operating bulldozers. Since the 1990s, half of Appalachian coal — a region that produces 26% of the U.S. supply — has come from this type of extraction.²This movement of the earth depends on an externalized landscape, that is, one determined by official documents or voices.³ And while the suffix of “earthmoving” might imply temporary relocation, here the word serves to obscure a process much less subtle. Through demolition and redistribution, entire ridges are flattened, gouged, and broken; mountainous topography mutilated into lumpy plateaus. Valleys and streams are buried, while local farmland, drinking water, air quality, and ecosystems are polluted. It is a lingering cruelty that results in severe health impacts in mining communities, including cardiovascular disease, lung cancer, birth defects, and an estimated 1,200 excess deaths per year when compared with other parts of the Appalachian region.⁴Integral to this technique is the D11 bulldozer. A reliable workhorse, its first task is to remove “overburden,” the surface landscape and geological layers resting above the vein of coal to be mined, transported, and commodified. Mining companies use teams of the machines along with massive dragline excavators and fleets of dump trucks.⁵ The video of Black Thunder shows them working in neat lines, like agricultural laborers in a field, but with a surreal mechanization in size and autonomy — metallic behemoths in the dirt reflective of a dystopian thriller. The overburden, its terminology implying that it is an inconvenient barrier, is chewed up and spit out. The carbon dioxide emitted from the process of mining, along with the later combustion of the coal, contributes to another devastating force: global warming. And while the relationship between earthmoving and energy may at first appear foreign, Black Thunder and coal mines across the nation provide a haunting illustration. It is in examples like this, which reorient the landscape and resources that surround entire communi-ties and ecosystems, that an industry achieves its name in the most literal sense: moving Earth. ● 1.“Coal Explained,” U.S. Energy Information Administration, accessed April 13, 2022.; The number jumped from 400 million tons per year to over 1,100 million tons. Today, it has fallen closer to 1960s levels, despite attempts by some to reinvigorate “clean coal.” But in a March 2022 issue of the trade journal, Coal Age, the spokesperson for the National Mining Association, Conor Bernstein, argued that amid energy tensions with Russia, producers and policymakers should, “Beware of eliminating fossil fuel supply and generating options…” and to, “produce, manufacture, build and export as much as we can to shore up U.S. energy security,”; Conor Bernstein, “ Re-embrace American Energy Abundance,” Coal Age, March 2022.2.Jedediah Purdy, “The Violent Remaking of Appalachia,” The Atlantic, March 21, 2016; Appalachian is a region composed primarily of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky. 3.Author and environmentalist Rob Nixon speaks of two conceptions for landscapes: official and vernacular.; Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011).4.Richard Schiffman, “A Troubling Look At The Human Toll Of Mountaintop Removal Mining,” YaleEnvironment360.5.“Arch Coal Uses Cat Semi-Autonomous Dozers to Optimize Their Fleet,” Cat, Mining, accessed March 12, 2022. https://a-mcquiston.info/Work-1 Tue, 22 Jun 2021 20:47:58 +0000 A. McQuiston https://a-mcquiston.info/Work-1 Selected Works, 2016—present https://a-mcquiston.info/Info Tue, 22 Jun 2021 21:10:32 +0000 A. McQuiston https://a-mcquiston.info/Info BIOGRAPHYAndrew McQuiston (he/him) is a graphic designer and educator practicing in Philadelphia and New York. A multidisciplinary approach informs his work in brand identity, print, and digital design with clients and collaborators in industries ranging from music and technology to hospitality and commerce. Beyond these projects, Andrew researches the political, aesthetic, and environmental contexts and consequences of design. He holds a MA in Design Research, Writing &amp; Criticism from the School of Visual Arts and a BFA in Graphic Design with a concentration in Book Arts &amp; Printmaking from the University of the Arts. Andrew currently works as a Senior Art Director for the LA-based design and technology studio Use All Five.&nbsp; Previously Andrew worked as the Associate Art Director for UI at Urban Outfitters and a Graphic Designer at Eastern Standard. He also taught&nbsp;as an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of the Arts. For a wider sample of work including commercial projects, references, and CV, please feel free to get in touch.&nbsp;This site was built with Cargo and the font used is Neue Haas Grotesk.&nbsp; © 2023, Andrew McQuiston https://a-mcquiston.info/Header-archive Thu, 07 Nov 2019 22:03:17 +0000 A. McQuiston https://a-mcquiston.info/Header-archive ⬤⬤ &nbsp;⬤A McQuiston https://a-mcquiston.info/OtherWorkshop Wed, 17 Feb 2021 22:25:30 +0000 A. McQuiston https://a-mcquiston.info/OtherWorkshop ⬤ &nbsp;⬤⬤ OtherWorkshop Type As Materialotherwork.co&nbsp; University of the Arts GDES.230.01 Editorial Systems 02.16.21 &nbsp;&nbsp; 3:00pm ⬤ ⬤ ⬤ <img width="8333" height="8333" width_o="8333" height_o="8333" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/3b815e031716d670179ebe4c63243513dee177c90dc3c8bedc7cccf660971839/GDES_230_01_SP21_WittrockG_05Workshop.jpg" data-mid="103745252" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/3b815e031716d670179ebe4c63243513dee177c90dc3c8bedc7cccf660971839/GDES_230_01_SP21_WittrockG_05Workshop.jpg" /> <img width="2000" height="2000" width_o="2000" height_o="2000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/7fb941463a25f72e5b9dd050c34ec897d71a6e25ccb6ca408d97a649ccd8dbd1/b-2-01.png" data-mid="99256826" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/7fb941463a25f72e5b9dd050c34ec897d71a6e25ccb6ca408d97a649ccd8dbd1/b-2-01.png" /> <img width="1204" height="1198" width_o="1204" height_o="1198" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/69003a17faf8871a477cfbef35b582e5de1198881f319448c6148969b218ab71/GDES_230_01_SP21_05Workshop.jpg" data-mid="103745478" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/69003a17faf8871a477cfbef35b582e5de1198881f319448c6148969b218ab71/GDES_230_01_SP21_05Workshop.jpg" /> <img width="4167" height="4167" width_o="4167" height_o="4167" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/980694973d4d3bbbc974b302e69145c702763174e8cc9070ddaac9e16c6f62b3/GDES_230_01_SP21_ScottJ_GroupAWorkshop_02.jpg" data-mid="103745250" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/980694973d4d3bbbc974b302e69145c702763174e8cc9070ddaac9e16c6f62b3/GDES_230_01_SP21_ScottJ_GroupAWorkshop_02.jpg" /> <img width="6956" height="6956" width_o="6956" height_o="6956" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/5801ed4e8e4ab31ef3dd33363682bd2796529cd7f5839b5dc1255385224c2981/GDES_230_01_SP21_Jung-Min-GroupAWorkshop_01.jpg" data-mid="103745241" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/5801ed4e8e4ab31ef3dd33363682bd2796529cd7f5839b5dc1255385224c2981/GDES_230_01_SP21_Jung-Min-GroupAWorkshop_01.jpg" /> <img width="4167" height="4167" width_o="4167" height_o="4167" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/6e92e902fec488874ded908a1112c28cd546fc652f6b393dcde97bdab13a93cf/GDES_230_01_SP21_ScottJ_GroupAWorkshop_01.jpg" data-mid="103745249" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/6e92e902fec488874ded908a1112c28cd546fc652f6b393dcde97bdab13a93cf/GDES_230_01_SP21_ScottJ_GroupAWorkshop_01.jpg" /> Group One ⬤ Group Two <img width="2000" height="2000" width_o="2000" height_o="2000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/5e075686be43d83b8b85e29608a61ed4313b69f4b731de77bf895cdb8685eff7/GDES_230_01_SP21_KlavinsK_GroupB_05Workshop_02.jpg" data-mid="103745244" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/5e075686be43d83b8b85e29608a61ed4313b69f4b731de77bf895cdb8685eff7/GDES_230_01_SP21_KlavinsK_GroupB_05Workshop_02.jpg" /> <img width="2000" height="2000" width_o="2000" height_o="2000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/e6e1d687389ce239d86d881402cd103253f3559b57186c54bf61695ea47eea50/GDES_230_01_SP21_KlavinsK_GroupB_05Workshop_03.jpg" data-mid="103745245" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/e6e1d687389ce239d86d881402cd103253f3559b57186c54bf61695ea47eea50/GDES_230_01_SP21_KlavinsK_GroupB_05Workshop_03.jpg" /> <img width="2000" height="2000" width_o="2000" height_o="2000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/fea1f8671880bf96b9253648c482cfe0ba544723c6542b2f836c82787a09818f/GDES_230_01_SP21_KlavinsK_GroupB_05Workshop_04.jpg" data-mid="103745246" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/fea1f8671880bf96b9253648c482cfe0ba544723c6542b2f836c82787a09818f/GDES_230_01_SP21_KlavinsK_GroupB_05Workshop_04.jpg" /> <img width="2000" height="2000" width_o="2000" height_o="2000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/ac92e5222a99a43034c379e3f599feddde4e1aa1785463ca855820c5cfadc899/GDES_230_01_SP21_KlavinsK_GroupB_05Workshop_01.jpg" data-mid="103745243" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/ac92e5222a99a43034c379e3f599feddde4e1aa1785463ca855820c5cfadc899/GDES_230_01_SP21_KlavinsK_GroupB_05Workshop_01.jpg" /> ⬤ Group Three <img width="2000" height="2000" width_o="2000" height_o="2000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/1823f8e63b28fd8e69f57964c46b9ec4efadf1cca349f6db9a5c12c77b78386d/GDES_230_01_SP21_DasR_05Workshop.jpg" data-mid="103745702" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/1823f8e63b28fd8e69f57964c46b9ec4efadf1cca349f6db9a5c12c77b78386d/GDES_230_01_SP21_DasR_05Workshop.jpg" /> <img width="2500" height="2500" width_o="2500" height_o="2500" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/2a010e62ea16d77fa6ea424aa1fa3e85aeb321380b793e2b183cda2954d0b098/GDES_230_01_SP21_AktarM_05Workshop.jpg" data-mid="103745236" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/2a010e62ea16d77fa6ea424aa1fa3e85aeb321380b793e2b183cda2954d0b098/GDES_230_01_SP21_AktarM_05Workshop.jpg" /> <img width="2000" height="2000" width_o="2000" height_o="2000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/b68e898048170a80f0e215d6610ecddcf33075eab8ee196bc62010f728d34a42/b-4.jpg" data-mid="103745838" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/b68e898048170a80f0e215d6610ecddcf33075eab8ee196bc62010f728d34a42/b-4.jpg" /> <img width="883" height="886" width_o="883" height_o="886" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d5b10f7f81921f4a5b9717340d6db75e4348dc7e0819fedbdc13b4f2d0ed388e/GDES_230_01_SP21_EdwardsM.png" data-mid="103745240" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/883/i/d5b10f7f81921f4a5b9717340d6db75e4348dc7e0819fedbdc13b4f2d0ed388e/GDES_230_01_SP21_EdwardsM.png" /> ⬤ Group Four <img width="2000" height="2000" width_o="2000" height_o="2000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/aa086fd89e8754caa262b90c9ba3f63d5d246de5b7e556bc8671c763254c9ae9/d-1.png" data-mid="99256828" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/aa086fd89e8754caa262b90c9ba3f63d5d246de5b7e556bc8671c763254c9ae9/d-1.png" /> <img width="8333" height="8333" width_o="8333" height_o="8333" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/2a9aebfc8fc3b616d3a47c6dc181a9ede916691033086ea5d639838107a6d665/GDES_230_01_SP21_DinhV_05Workshop.jpg" data-mid="103745239" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/2a9aebfc8fc3b616d3a47c6dc181a9ede916691033086ea5d639838107a6d665/GDES_230_01_SP21_DinhV_05Workshop.jpg" /> <img width="2010" height="2001" width_o="2010" height_o="2001" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/4a1c81f16c83a3a38eef6d734e2988f2a8b39028202a4d31f68351c55f683b1f/GDES_230_01_SP21_RuqaiyyahA_05Workshop.png" data-mid="103745248" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/4a1c81f16c83a3a38eef6d734e2988f2a8b39028202a4d31f68351c55f683b1f/GDES_230_01_SP21_RuqaiyyahA_05Workshop.png" /> <img width="4167" height="4167" width_o="4167" height_o="4167" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/5406e75c679533f3e65fc8e7134f62dae7aeea69df21a176e1b41f0845a809f7/GDES_230_01_SP21_RodriguezA_05Workshop.jpg" data-mid="103745247" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/5406e75c679533f3e65fc8e7134f62dae7aeea69df21a176e1b41f0845a809f7/GDES_230_01_SP21_RodriguezA_05Workshop.jpg" /> ⬤ ⬤ ⬤