Strategy & Voice
1 disciplineVoice & Messaging
#voice-messagingCuratorial copy that holds two registers at once: civic memory (Dr. King, Marion Barry, the Poor People's Campaign, the 1968 riots) and library institution (the People's Archive, the renovation history, the Mies provenance). Each named figure gets a long-distance pull line, a mid-distance overview, and an up-close detail set tied to the artifact in the vitrine.
Brand & Identity
2 disciplinesTypography Systems
#typography-systemsTwo-family stack carrying two registers. MARTIN (Tré Seals, Vocaltype) for the civil-rights story; FF Bau (Christian Schwartz, FontFont 2002) for the Bauhaus interior. The system runs on a four-tier distance hierarchy calibrated to the physical exhibit: Section identifier, Long distance reading, Mid distance overview, Up close details. The hierarchy lets the same system carry a 25-foot panel headline and a vitrine caption.
Brand Identity
#brand-identityHalftone-treated archival photography in Activist Orange and Bauhaus Black. Cream stamp-cards holding named-figure callouts ("MARION BARRY / MAYOR FOR LIFE"). Solid-black call-out blocks for the headline moments. The visual system reads inside the Mies interior without competing with the building's architectural grammar.
Environmental & IRL
2 disciplinesPermanent exhibit "Up from the People: Protest & Change in DC" sited inside the Mies-designed MLK Memorial Library. Workhorse served as the brand and visual-design partner agency working alongside Bluecadet, Colloqate, Kubik Maltbie, Openbox, and Studio Joseph. Asymmetric trapezoidal exhibit panels cut to Mies-modernist angles hold named civil-rights figures (Marion Barry, Walter Fauntroy) alongside their physical artifacts in glass vitrines below.
Environmental Graphics
#environmental-graphicsBuilt into the architecture. Exhibit panels are sized to read at the building's viewing distances. Glass vitrines run flush with the panel walls. Cuts and angles pick up the Mies grid. The system has to coexist with the Mecanoo + OTJ renovation that wraps it.
Less than a decade after 1963's "I Have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln monument, the DCPL board voted to name the city's central library after the civil rights icon.