San Francisco Design Week 2019
Our “Close Knit…” Community poster

One hundred top design agencies were invited to submit an ‘artefact’ for San Francisco Design Week 2019.

We were delighted to be one of them.

The brief? “CommUNITY”: how multiple creatives come together to create a successful outcome.

We repeated the brief: Comm-u-nit-y. Then slower. Comm-u-NIT-y…? Close knit community…?

We could knit a poster!?

So we did. Or rather, we found an artisan, Tash Celm (a two-minute walk away from Folk) to knit it for us.

Obviously, the phrase exists for a reason. Many things: one thing. Multiple strands. Different colours. One community.

We liked the idea that from afar it’d look like a normal, if slightly pixelated, type-based poster. Close up, the pixels are real.

We liked the play on new and old technology. Cell by cell. Something truly digital, made by actual digits.

Tests were done. Wool ply and colours chosen. We designed the pattern for Tash to lovingly create the finished poster, by hand. It was then boxed-framed (also just around the corner from Folk) and posted to SF.

Ten different colours of hand-dyed, 100% wool spell COMMUNITY.

Being wool, the poster can be washed. It’s affixed to its frame with 86 antique different coloured buttons. Care Instructions and all.

San Francisco Design Week 2019 runs from 20–28 June. The works – 100 submissions from 14 countries – will be auctioned in a silent auction at the opening gala night.