No. 55: Back to School with a New art.yale.edu
Welcome to Soft Labor, the namesake publication of Soft Labor, a strategic consultancy for organizations, designers, and the culture industry led by Sarah Hromack-Chan. Soft Labor is the research arm of the consultancy and a publication about creative labor—what it is, what it looks like, and how it has and will continue to change. Did someone forward you this publication? Subscribe, read our archives, or email us at info@softlabor.biz.
Soft Labor has been working with graphic design studio Other Means on a new website for the Yale School of Art for some time now. Soft Labor provided strategy, verbal identity, and writing to the project and we're thrilled to announce that the website is live.
Other Means wrote an eloquent description of the site's design concept, which inspired Soft Labor's subsequent voice and tone work, as well as the writing.:
The website’s organizing philosophy is informed by the balance the institution itself navigates: representing both the timeless solidity inherent in a 157-year-old art school, and the timely innovation essential to contemporary graduate arts education. Its general tone considers major landing pages as "timeless" content—content that is more "official" or "evergreen"—with notifications that are "timely," or more casual and conversational updates from the current academic year that bubble in tri-toned messages informed by the red, blue, and yellow of the School of Art shield.
We're grateful to Other Means and to the Yale School of Art for their collaboration, which was at once intellectually challenging and fun.
Soft Labor is also happy to note that we've recently partnered with design studio New Information on strategy and business development. New Information is a Brooklyn-based studio that works with culturally-forward institutions and brands. Current and former clients include Creative Time; Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture; Queens Museum; Whitney Museum of American Art; and many others. Have a project in mind? Reach out.