ATX Urban Art: Case Study

art direction, book design, cover design, copy editing, marketing

Cover conceptualized by Zoe Axelrod, images taken and chosen by Justin Ebel.
Spreads designed by Zoe Axelrod

ATX Urban Art: The Layers of Graffiti, Street Art, Murals, and Mosaics in Austin, Texas is a 700-page book chronicling Austin's best and most historic urban art over the last 70 years. During our Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign, we raised nearly $50,000.

I came onto this project shortly after its inception to provide art direction and help turn this tremendous idea into reality. In collaboration with designer Justin Ebel, I created a robust system that's strict yet flexible enough to handle a wide variety of content from complex image layouts to text-heavy pages and everything in between.

buy the book & learn more

Final spreads from Introduction and Street Art sections. Designed by Zoe Axelrod

Final spreads from Mosaics and Outro sections. Designed by Zoe Axelrod

Early Stages of Creation

While I was working with J Muzacz on his rebrand, Justin Ebel was working with him on ATX Urban Art. By the time I joined the team, they had the book's concept down, and Justin had taken many photos of urban art across town.

We knew the book would have 4 chapters: graffiti, street art, murals, and mosaics. Each chapter would have an introduction with 6–10 subsections that educate the reader on the history and context of each artform. After that comes a large artist features section in which each artist's work is showcased over 2–6 pages and accompanied by a short bio.

However, the design, flow, and details were still largely undecided, so Justin and I began ideating. How could we universally represent these seemingly-disparate artforms? The black pages were the first element to illuminate ATX Urban Art's visual voice: clean and sophisticated while still honoring the gritty roots of graffiti and street art.

Early process spreads. Designed by Zoe Axelrod

Design Process

From there, we assigned each chapter a color and signature display typeface to visually represent the different mediums and aesthetics. All other type was set in DIN 2014 to build a strong foundation and unify the other elements.

A simple 6x6 grid allows for immense flexibility while still keeping consistency throughout. However, we occasionally choose to break the grid when it best suits the layout or image. Certain spreads take advantage of that flexibility, but a few signature layouts pop up throughout the book to bring a sense of familiarity and increase the impact of the more wild spreads.

We split up the work by chapter, and I designed Street Art, Mosaics, and the Intro & Outro. That ended up being roughly two-fifths of the book, allowing me to also edit the text and handle promotions and printing.

Typography, colors, and their usages

Final spreads with a simple, often-utilized layout. Designed by Zoe Axelrod. All photos by Justin Ebel

Indiegogo

After only a few weeks, ATX Urban Art raised nearly $50,000 through our Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign. This was the first time the book's branding expanded beyond its own pages, and we kept it simple to highlight the perks and featured artists.

My responsibilities were to manage all 24 campaign perks and design their promotional images. I also heavily edited and structured both the script for the promotional video and the text for the campaign information.

Perk banner showing all perks except artist commissions. Perk images designed by Zoe Axelrod

Collectors pack. Sold out

Federico Archuleta screen print pack. Sold out

Everything Else

Along with art direction and design, I edited the book's text for ease of reading and grammar. Another large task was creating the ATX Urban Art Map, which Justin and I populated with over 100 artworks from the book for people to visit in person.

I also discovered and managed contact with the press, influencers, and retailers, where I secured articles and in-person promotions which greatly expanded the audience of ATX Urban Art.