Acme Art & Design

06/01/2025

Looking back at projects from 2024!:
Mammalian Diving Reflex
30th Anniversary Annual Report

“Performance Art that doesn't suck.”
— Toronto Life

Acme designed the 2023 edition of Mammalian Diving Reflex's annual report—“30 Years of Regular Ass Folks”—celebrating three decades of Mammalian's unique social interventions. Since 1993, Mammalian Diving Reflex has been creating site and social-specific performance events, theatre productions, participatory gallery installations, videos, art objects and theoretical texts to foster dialogue and dismantle barriers between individuals of all backgrounds by bringing people together in new and unusual ways. The report features exuberant photo highlights from Mammalian's extensive performance history and illustrations—including the epic wraparound cover art—by David Oro.

https://www.behance.net/gallery/195596557/Mammalian-Diving-Reflex-30th-Anniversary-Report

06/01/2025

Looking back at projects from 2024!:

Islands in the Stream
Print and digital promotional materials for Vtape's 19th Curatorial Incubator

Vtape is a video art distributor that represents an international collection of contemporary and historical video art, documentaries, and installations. Vtape's Curatorial Incubator v.19: Island in the Streams program features two screenings of projects that explore collections, how they are accessed online as never-ending digital repositories, and how we can interrupt the stream to create new moments for refuge.

Of the two programs Vtape says "What happened to produce these ruins? curated by Muriel N. Kahwagi considers moving-image works’ ability to leave a material trace of places, becoming accidental archives that document disappearing landscapes. … Kai Trotz-Motayne’s program Where do our memories go? … explores the changing landscape of Caribbean communities in Toronto and how rituals are passed on and reconstructed through generations."

The campaign design plays with these themes of traces, accidents, disappearance, change, and reconstruction through lettering illustrations made by manipulating text on a flatbed scanner—words are repeated, fragmented, and distorted.

https://www.behance.net/gallery/199781095/Islands-in-the-Stream

06/01/2025

Looking back at projects from 2024!

Book design for The Prophets, by Richard Ibghy & Marilou Lemmens

“As people who examine the destiny and moral character of a nation, economists are modern-day prophets, and the charts and diagrams they produce are their prophecies”

This book focuses on Richard Ibghy & Marilou Lemmens’ seminal work The Prophets (2013–2015), a delicate handmade collection of 412 small, whimsical sculptures made from everyday materials that renders economic graphs into makeshift models. In this work, the artists explore what it means to move from a material world of entangled, interacting agents to a world of mathematical modelling and graphical abstraction. The Prophets cuts across a wide range of historical and contemporary topics of interest to economists such as labour, consumption, production, taxes, savings, investments, credit and so on, to constitute a diagrammatology of economic thought. With essays by Sven Lütticken, Harro Maas, Marina Roy, and Jakub Zdebik.

https://www.behance.net/gallery/207184887/The-Prophets

22/04/2022

New work for Mammalian Diving Reflex—an annual report for 2021—Mammalian continues to make good on their promise of IDEAL ENTERTAINMENT FOR THE END OF THE WORLD!

Our 2021 Annual Review 'The Art & Science of Process Touring' is out! As a follow up to 2020's 'You Want Pivot? We Got Pivot!' we review the challenges and successes that 2021 brought us and talk about about new developments we are looking forward to this year.

(A little reminder to sign up for our eNews for more detailed updates on upcoming projects 😉).

You can view the Annual Review here:https://mammalian.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/MDR-Annual-Review-2021-FINAL-Web-Version.pdf

A big thanks to Michael Barker at
at Acme Art & Design for his amazing graphic design.

06/05/2021

New work for Mammalian Diving Reflex! Acme designed the 2020 “You want pivot? We got pivot!” annual report for Mammalian—In their words it showcases “how we navigated the unusual year, with lots of pivoting, digitization and hand sanitizer.” Mammalian Diving Reflex creates site and social-specific performance events, theatre productions, participatory gallery installations, videos, art objects and theoretical texts to foster dialogue and dismantle barriers between individuals of all backgrounds by bringing people together in new and unusual ways.

Graphic Design,Adobe InDesign CC,Adobe Photoshop

15/12/2020

New work: A Website for filmmaker, author and multimedia artist Ali Kazimi, recipient of the 2019 Governor General’s Award for Visual and Media Arts. The website features a portfolio of his award-winning work in film, photography and installation, and a selection of his writing. alikazimi.ca

04/12/2020

New work: A new website for Shyam Selvadurai, author of Funny Boy—Shyam co-wrote the screenplay for the film-adaptation of Funny Boy with Deepa Mehta, who also directed the film. This highly-anticipated dramatic feature debuts on CBC Gem tonight at 8pm! For more information about Shyam or the film visit Shyamselvadurai.com.

24/09/2020

Shakespeare in the Ruff are mounting a small production of their new performance As We Live It: "In March of 2020, we Ruffians were preparing our summer production, As You Like It. The world asked us to think differently. So we did… As We Live It is a celebration of live theatre, that takes the audience on a journey around Withrow Park. A creative compilation of our thoughts on one of the most significant years in recent memory, it is theatre made for today… Tickets are free, and extremely limited."

[In the Spring I started Work with RUFF on their planned production of "As You Like It"—we were all sad to see it cancelled—but I was happy to have the opportunity to contribute this scratchy type-lock-up for "As We Live It"!) Shakespeare in the Ruff is perfect theatre for rough times.

Visit the post for more.

19/05/2020

The 2020 edition of the 'First Things First' manifesto is here—"In 1964, 22 visual communicators, young and old, signed the original call for our skills to be put to worthwhile use. In 2000, 33 designers signed a revised version of the original call, and in 2014 — on the 50th anniversary of the manifesto — over 1600 designers around the world renewed their commitment to the First Things First Manifesto. With the ongoing destruction of essential living systems on our planet, this message has only grown more urgent. As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, we renew the previous manifestos with a greater sense of urgency as we see the compounded effects of our climate crisis unfold before us. It is imperative that we take climate action now."

We're done with manifestos. We want the design industry to step up and take climate action.

10/05/2020

New Work: Acme was commissioned to design the first-ever annual report for Mammalian Diving Reflex. Mammalian Diving Reflex creates site and social-specific performance events, theatre productions, participatory gallery installations, videos, art objects and theoretical texts to foster dialogue and dismantle barriers between individuals of all backgrounds by bringing people together in new and unusual ways. The report features Mammalian's exuberant performance photography and ACME-made string illustrations.