Avoiding a spectacle: Report from the Ad Hoc Committee on Baldwin Hall to the Franklin College Faculty Senate

This piece was designed for the School of Art’s 2020 faculty exhibition, All Together Now. My goal was to give typographic life and consideration to a thoughtful 120-page report recently  issued by a University ad hoc committee. I ended up with two, large 24-inch wide sheets with the main body of the report being 100 inches long and the appendix was 70 inches long.

The well-considered 2019 report was earnestly researched and written by five faculty from UGA’s Franklin College as a response to the University’s handling of events related to the discovery of human remains on campus— many of formerly enslaved people— during a construction project next to Baldwin Hall (ironically enough, home to theArcheology faculty). I felt the impactful report was trapped in default 12-point Times New Roman with one-inch margins likely destined to be read by few. By simply setting the immense amount of text in fine typography as well as designing the information—adding emphasis to certain key phrases and terms—I aimed to allow readers to gain some understanding of the topic without having to do a deep read themselves. The goal of “avoiding a spectacle” seemed a theme of the administration’s approach to the situation and was a phrase used multiple times in the report.