06.01.24 – 07.08.24
This show’s visual identity takes inspiration from the New York Stock Exchange, one of the most capitalist, corporate, and uniquely American organizations. Ganahl’s work is full of criticisms of Americanism and capitalism, so a play on the NYSE seemed appropriate.
We thought it would be exciting to see how far we could satirize the NYSE's aesthetics. To us, the stock exchange has a clear, iconic visual presence, full of flashing lights, bright greens and reds, solid blacks, intricate line and bar graphs, and iconic logos placed sporadically throughout the screens of the trading floor. It’s simultaneously a chaotic place, where thousands of stockbrokers bustle about, and an organized system, where each price is meticulously tracked and reported.
The artist himself proposed the name of the show, If the Price Is Right, as a nod to the NYSE’s focus on the price of stocks. Much of the work that the artist chose to exhibit made explicit reference to stocks, prices, and American capitalism, so the title felt especially relevant.
We searched for a font that resembled the LED tickers inside the trading floor. We found a free font online called “LED Counter 7” where every glyph is made of dots, just like the iconic dotted stock charts. The font looked great in green, red, and white on black background. It looked especially convincing when animated, practically resembling a real stock ticker. The font was also versatile and looked great at both small and large scales. We ended up using the font for ads, press releases, the exhibition booklet, social media posts, tombstone information, and the vinyl graphic on the window.
Next, we gathered an array of recognizable financial logos, such as Visa, Mastercard, and ICE. We experimented with altering them until we made a set of fake stock graphs, knockoff logos, and message animations in the style of the NYSE. We then used these designs to advertise the event and design the cover of the exhibition booklet.
Inspired by the NYSE logo
Inspired by the Mastercard logo
Inspired by the Visa logo
Inspired by the Wells Fargo logo
Inspired by the ICE logo
Inspired by the Citadel logo
Inspired by the New York Stock Exchange logo
Inspired by the OpenAI logo
To advertise the exhibition to passersby, we designed a custom vinyl installation to be placed on the outside glass of the gallery. The design featured green/red two-decimal numbers between 0.01 and 9.99 across the glass. Stylized in the dotted font and printed in green and red, the vinyl installation simulated the design of a busy stock ticker chart and felt cohesive with the visual identity of the rest of the exhibition.
We decided that Rainer's two largest paintings should sit near the front of the gallery to make sure that passersby could see them through the gallery window. The first piece was inspired by a CNN article, and the second by an Axios article. Both articles were reproduced by the artist using acrylic on stretched canvas. The pieces were structured asymmetrically, with the painting on the left raised slightly higher than the painting on the right. We installed the rest of the paintings Rainer exhibited evenly throughout the gallery.
The walls in the gallery were originally painted dark blue, a color not used in the visual identity we had designed for the exhibition. Although we would have liked to paint the walls white (to maximize the audience’s focus on the works themselves) or black (as a reference to the black backgrounds of stock charts), we were not permitted by the gallery to change the wall color before the exhibition.
Before we finalized the visual identity for this exhibition, the gallery and the artist had released a separate poster that did not use the NYSE-inspired identity. We would have preferred that all exhibition advertisements posted feature our visual identity for a more cohesive, clear feel.
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