Rhode Island School of Design (RISD)
Questioning to Create
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Building the future of RISD with its community
Founded in Providence in 1877, Rhode Island School of Design is one of the leading art and design schools in the world. Known for its cross-disciplinary approach to art and design pedagogy, RISD has always attracted students who are interested in making while critically engaging with culture and producing ideas that impact the future.
In recent years the school entered a transformation that involved deeper, structural commitments to evolve and open up—to a wider range of creative voices and practices, to the decolonization of histories and knowledge, and to new applications of design disciplines and technologies that would attract the next generation of aspiring creative minds.
Over the course of a year, we partnered with RISD and research agency ON ROAD to build an identity framework that ties all parts of the institution together, amplifying the voices of this diverse and distinctive community.
Co-creating with RISD
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Throughout the process, we engaged a broad community of RISD stakeholders beyond our core steering group. This took different forms, from interviews and surveys to sharing updates of work in progress on a public microsite. We also conducted open forums at key intervals during which everyone at RISD had the opportunity to critique and reflect on the work.
Together with our partners at ON ROAD, we conducted ethnographic research with underrepresented students at RISD and with young, self-made creatives who chose to pursue a creative career without a degree. Our goal was to understand the changing perceptions around higher education in the arts.
An Active Purpose
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Our strategic aim was to capture the ambition of the school’s artists, designers and scholars to create a more just, fair and sustainable society. We knew our purpose needed to resonate with these audiences while also being actionable for anybody within the RISD community—something they would naturally do every day. Together we co-crafted RISD’s new guiding idea: Question to Create, Create to Question, which captures the spirit of curiosity and drives everything RISD creators make.
Making Strategy Visible
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An art and design education is never complete. Designers, artists and scholars make the invisible visible through a constant iterative dialogue with their peers and with culture at large. A dynamic, constantly evolving process of learning, interrogating, making, critiquing, and starting again. The core visual concept of ‘Complete / Incomplete’ translates into a set of open, flexible tools and frameworks for the talented RISD community to use and evolve. Layouts are layered and modular – hinting at what’s just off the screen or the page and keeping the focus on the content. This concept is most evident, however, in the custom typography.
RISD’s Own Typeface
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The design system captures this endless loop in a simple and recognizable typographic signature that ranges from complete to incomplete and ensures consistency while allowing for flexibility and expression.
After an extensive exploration that yielded over 105 font prototypes, a custom super family of typefaces was drawn by a RISD alum, Ryan Bugden (GD 14), who worked closely with the RISD and Gretel teams throughout the development.
The new RISD typeface consists of a Serif which ranges from complete to incomplete and harmonizes with the rich history of the school, Providence’s architecture, and the RISD seal. This family is contrasted by the utilitarian RISD Sans, which serves as a straightforward, neutral undertone. RISD’s custom typefaces contain the tensions that define the school: past and future, expression and utility, complete and incomplete.
“The typeface development was a deeply iterative process, in search of a dynamic typographic voice that could express the philosophies underlying RISD’s pedagogy.”
Bringing the Past Forward
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The RISD seal contains so much of what’s alive at RISD: a rich history, a visual mark rooted in craft, and a timeless piece of design. Drawn in 1951 by sculptor, stone carver, calligrapher and late RISD faculty member John Howard Benson, the RISD seal is a cornerstone of the identity, which is proudly loved and used by its community.
The seal, which serves as RISD’s logo, was redrawn by Bugden in consultation with the Benson family to perform better at small sizes by lessening its density, improving the clarity of letterforms and reviving the calligraphic details that had been lost over the decades. Bugden looked closely at its analog past in order to evolve it for the future.
Color as Participatory Element
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RISD’s new official color palette is simple and concise: a foundation of black and white paired with a vibrant blue, a nod to the coastal locale and significant to the act of making throughout art and design history, from the first synthetically produced pigments to the hyperlink blue of the early internet.
To give parts of the school more flexibility and a unique voice, we established a framework so that they can use an additional color while abiding by typographic and layout standards. Color at RISD is a vehicle for self-expression.
“It was important that its most important stakeholders—the members of its community—be part of the process from day one. This openness resulted in work that captures the ethos of the community and feels recognizably RISD: rooted in the institution’s history but fresh and forward-thinking.”
JOE GEBBIA, RISD TRUSTEE, RISD 2005 GRADUATE,
AND CO-FOUNDER OF AIRBNB
Thank you to all of the artists and designers whose work is featured here: Gabriel Abascal 20 GD, Amalia Attias 20 FD, Jacob Betz 17 TX, Meredith Binnette 20 FAV, Maximilian Damon 22 CR, Maria Constanza Ferreira 17 FAV/GD, Cameron Galley 21 GD, Zoe Aurelia Gross MFA 18 CR, Jasmine Gutbrod 21 FD, Brooks Hagan, Harvey Hespa 18 TX, Yimei Hu 21 JM, Emily Holtzman 18 TX, Elena Danlei Huang 21 MID, Nikako Kanamoto 20 CR, Alexander Kern 21 AR, Erica Kim 18 AP/ID, Deirdre Klemek 21 FD, Hwi Lin Lee 20 TX, Qihang Li 20 PR, Kasia Matlak 17 MID, Georgina Nolan 21 GD, Sam Northcut 22 FD/PR, Adrian Ocone 23 PT, Pneuhaus, Kunyue Qi 21 AR, Kate Reed 21 ID, Isabelle Saxton 20 AP, William Sumrall 21 GD, Sophie Wang 21 TX, Yueying Wang 20 PH, Jen Chenyu Zhang 21 AR, Jack X. Zhou 22 IL, Katia Zolotovsky. Photo credits: Cassidy Batiz 16 PH, George Gray, Aubrey Greenawalt 22 PH, David O’Connor, Jo Sittenfeld MFA 08 PH.