llewellyn hensley

Focusing on the work of prolific American type designer Tobias Frere-Jones, this postcard series explores the designer's development, inspirations and career to date through an exploration of four of his typefaces: Garage Gothic, Interstate, Gotham and Retina.

On the postcard faces, type appears in a justified block, in the style of Font Bureau type specimens.

This project was completed under the direction of Aki Nurosi for Typography II, RISD Spring 2015.

Lecture and event posters from Spring 2015.

This series of stamp designs for the United States Postal Service celebrates the work of alternative comic book artists Los Bros Hernandez and their long-running collaborative work, Love & Rockets.

The three-sheet stamp set highlights comic book cover artwork, sketches, and other landmark drawings from the series. Featured in the collector's set of stamps are an original poster, cancellation stamp and printed envelope case. Information needed to adapt the system to incorporate new designs is included in the style guide.

Designed for Visual Systems, RISD Spring 2015.

Informational poster describing graphic designer Bradbury Thompson’s 1979 masterwork, the Washburn College Bible. This first substantial redesign of the bible since Gutenberg’s 1450s printing organizes text into phrases and paragraphs, so it reads like poetry.

Completed under the guidance of Douglass Scott in History of Graphic Design, RISD Fall 2014.

The Virginia Center for Architecture announces a new exhibition chronicling the intersections between fashion, graphic design, interior design and architecture throughout the last century. MUTATIONS: The DNA of Twentieth Century Design features the work of 28 iconic designers and demonstrates the physical and metaphysical intersections that bind design.

The exhibition was curated by Roberto L. Ventura with students from Virginia Commonwealth University’s Departments of Graphic, Fashion and Interior Design. Most of the students came to the project through their participation in the Middle of Broad interdisciplinary studio and each played major roles in the generation of the design brand, exhibit design, and content. The design team included Liz Belte, Sarah Brown, Ying Jun Cheng, Laura Colagrande, Llewellyn Hensley and Mia Zhou.

Exhibition dates July-October 2013. Photographs by Eric Saylor

This accordion book illustrates the development and life’s work of Swiss graphic design pioneer Josef Müller-Brockmann. Original essays, along with posters, paintings, advertisements, and exhibitions contextualize Müller-Brockmann’s innovations within design history, citing relevant cultural forces, political movements, and conflicts.

Content is structured on a rigid grid, around which Müller-Brockmann’s own work and academic principles were focused. The central section of the book examines a series of concert and festival posters, representing two decades of collaboration with the Zurich Concert Society.

Completed for Douglass Scott's History of Graphic Design class at RISD in Fall 2014.

This book, an excerpt from Irma A. Richter’s The Notebooks of Leonardo daVinci, gathers together several years of daVinci’s personal and professional journals, notes and drawings, along with Richter’s research and contextual snippets.

The design challenge required a simple structure for the dense text, with typographic treatments incorporated to maintain daVinci’s and Richter’s distinct voices. Financial tables, sketches and additional drawings of anatomy and weaponry from daVinci bring visual richness to the volume. The hardcover book is finished with a Smyth sewn binding.

Completed in Typography II with Aki Nurosi, RISD Spring 2015.

My typeface design for Slaughterhouse Five strives to reflect the satirical humor, humility and humanity of the novel’s author Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., and narrator, Billy Pilgrim.

Completed for Type Design with Professor Cyrus Highsmith in Spring 2015.

Before designing our first typeface in Type Design class with Cyrus Highsmith, we chose the book for which the typeface would be created. I chose Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Designing book covers for the selected text was a way to begin thinking about the structure and narrative presented. Using my own photographs of warehouse interiors and polished concrete, I sought to depict harsh materiality (a symbol for the horrors of war) and eerie otherworldliness (a reference to narrator Billy Pilgrim’s travels to alien world Tralfamadore).

Inspired by László Moholy-Nagy's paintings, the watercolors made for this 24"x48" wall calendar depict transitions in light and season.

The simple typographic grid turns a conventional calendar ninety degrees, with the days of the week running from top to bottom, rather than from left to right.

Completed for Typography II with Aki Nurosi, RISD Spring 2015.

This booklet gathers together a collection of envelope security patterns, used to protect personal and confidential information. Patterns were scanned and enlarged, and the color removed, creating a catalog of densely layered glyphs, drawings and other abstracted forms.

Created for an open research course during RISD Wintersession 2015.

A collection of screenshots made during type design class, each illustrating unexpected typographic states, miscalculations and unintended adjustments.

RISD 2015

This 33"x46" double-sided poster/maze book, entitled The Young & the Risoless,  contains a series of collage-based Risograph prints.

The products of this process rely heavily on chance. Variables include the level of ink saturation, imagery left from previous “masters” (the material into which originals are imprinted and from which copies are made), overprinting and image placement. The prints were grouped and given soap opera names, and one of my favorites was chosen for the book title.

Completed in a Book Structures workshop with Jan Baker, RISD Spring 2015.

Using the panorama function on an iPhone camera, I record distorted versions of natural and built environments. Irregular movements of the camera during exposure produce strange repetitive patterns, working against the camera’s attempts to create smooth and unified compositions.

2015.

Design and installation of window graphics for the grand opening of Storefront for Community Design in Richmond, Virginia. Imagery used for the graphics was based on two large-format prints made using a combination of manual and digital collage techniques.

Envelope security patterns overlay floral forms sourced from a wallpaper sample book. The animal characters in these compositions were removed and replaced with shadow forms made with ink washes.

The installation context was the opening of a small non-profit organization working to connect designers and architects with community members to develop projects ranging from single-family home accessibility ramps to neighborhood parks.

The goal of the installation was to introduce the organization to its neighbors, and for passersby to be able to see what was going on inside the space. Background colors were cut away from the prints, allowing for increased interplay between the workspace and its environment.

2013.

Made during the first several weeks of type design class with Cyrus Highsmith, these contour drawings of letters and chairs allowed students to begin perceiving the relationship between what Highsmith calls the “white shapes” (around letters and words) and the “black shapes” (the letters themselves).

His method of teaching works to train the eyes and hands to draw the spaces around letters and objects, with the goal of making more unified letterforms, words, typefaces and texts.

RISD Spring 2015.

I began to learn watercolor during a workshop with Professor Camden Whitehead while studying Interior Environments at Virginia Commonwealth University. These patterns are composed of rectilinear forms, curvilinear forms and numeric glyphs.

Watercolors are wonderful for formal study of the ways layering effects color interaction, saturation and blending. It is also a meditative way to take a break from the computer!

2012-2015.