Dallas Society of Visual Communications poster by Pentagram (Austin, TX): DJ Stout (creative director/art director/designer); Stu Taylor, Cassandra Cisneros (designers); pentagram.com
“Not only am I a sixth-generation Texan, but my entire graphic design career has been in the Lone Star State. I was the art director of Texas Monthly magazine for 13 years , and as a Pentagram partner based in Austin for another 13 years , I can’t help being influenced by my Texan roots. A large portion of my work is outside of the state of Texas—California, Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, and even London and Lima, Peru—but I would say that all of it has been informed by my regionalism in some way. This poster is a classic example of the Texas sense of humor. It’s what we call the ‘Texas brag,’ the joke that everything is bigger and better in Texas. But like we say, it ain’t braggin’ if it’s true.
“Getting the size and proportion of all the states just right was kind of tricky, but the most challenging part was getting the concept to read quickly. At first I labeled all the states with their postal-code abbreviations—PA, NY, CA—but even with the two-letter abbreviations and the shapes of the states drawn as accurately as possible, the poster just looked like a map of Texas with the different counties called out. Placing the full names in the states did the trick.” —DJ Stout
