A Texas Designer's Map of the World

The fabulous design agency Pentagram based in New York with partners like Angus Hyland (co-author of many excellant design/illustration books, The Picture Book: Contemporary Illustration & Paula Scher (AIGA medalists, notorius mapper, will feature soon), at the worlds leading multi-disciplinary design consultancy, feature an excellant map that Scher would be proud of.

The partner DJ Stout has created a “Texas Designer’s Map of the World” as a part of a promotion for Sappi Fine Paper. Based on the concept of a Texas Brag Map, the poster elucidates the worldview that everything is bigger and better in the Lone Star State. “It’s part of our Texas heritage and our collective sense of humor,” explains Stout. “My apologies to the other smaller, less interesting states on the map.”' (pentagram, 2008, p.new).

He divides a map of the U.S. into six parts and assigns each section to a graphic designer who resides within the region. When all six posters are put together, they form a giant map of the United States, “of course I was given the Southwest,” says Stout (pentagram, 2008, p.new). Its composition is bolshy, beautifully layered (as you notice opening the pdf on a sluggish computer), with Piet Zwart/H. N. Werkman letters treatment surrounded by soft pastel triadic harmony of red, blue, yellow. Yet still its not too disparaging with the these surreal, fluctuating sized elements like The World's biggest Jack Rabbit, it has Swiss grounding in neat, clean, precise, even grids of text J.M.Brockmann would be proud of, creating a salient [1] contrast. It also treats word (type) as image that crow [2], and concrete poets of appollinaire to mallarme would adore.

The other participants include Art Chantry, Rick Valicenti, Paul Sahre, Clive Piercy and Tim Hussey. Brilliant.

Download the large version image here.
http://blog.pentagram.com/2008/02/new-work-sappi.php

[1] Kress & Van leeuwen
[2] Left to Right: The Cultural Shift from Word to Image