Counterforce

The Counterforce Lab is a research and field studio dedicated to using art and design to develop creative collaborations, new fields of study and methodologies to research the environmental and socio-economic challenges of our time. Counterforce is spearheaded by professor Rebeca Mendez and strives to have a tangible impact on those issues.

This collaborative branding effort resulted in a visual identity conceived around notions of change and movement within a system: Newton's Cradle was chosen as the symbolic purveyor of the lab’s mission. The brand guidelines are accompanied by a publication which examines four issues affecting the greater Los Angeles area: the human cost of man-made ecological disasters (as exemplified by the Porter Ranch methane leak), urban farming, urban sprawl and the proliferation of invasive species. Each topic is approached differently, reflecting the diversity of practices and sensibilities within our team. Chapters are introduced by a series of maps which visualize some facet of the matter at hand.

My individual contribution consisted of incepting the identity (then vastly refined by Noopur Goel), creating the introductory maps and designing the publication's structural elements.