Dieu Donné is dedicated to the creation, promotion and preservation of contemporary art in the hand papermaking process. The nonprofit artist workspace in New York City includes a studio, a gallery, and an archive. A bit of history: Dieu Donné was the given name of the father of Dieu Donné’s founder; it literally means God-given.
For a recent updating of the organization’s identity, designers at Project Projects sought “to reinforce the role of Dieu Donné in the contemporary art world and convey the notion of experimentation with paper.” The combination of slightly toothy stock and letterpress printing evokes the tactility that is central to Dieu Donné.
The extending of the accent mark is a doubly nice touch. The wordmark’s position on the letterhead and business card “suggests an invisible diagonal which marks out the page format and establishes a grid.” This subtle reference to metric paper-proportion diagrams is elegant and energetic. It works wherever the wordmark can be on the upper right of a surface, including on the web site and on the building itself. Rather than having a fixed color system, the identity deliberately “employs a palette of multiple colors which can respond to individual artworks and evolve with the organization over time.”
The designers also created a letterhead template so that Dieu Donné can imprint a current board list on their correspondence. The address block is added at the same time, so everything aligns precisely.
Business card: Strathmore Writing, Wove, Bright White, 100c (270 gsm)
Letterhead: Strathmore Writing 25% Cotton, Wove, Bright White, 80t (118 gsm)
Envelope: Strathmore Writing 25% Cotton, Wove, Bright White, 24 lb (90 gsm)
Client: Dieu Donné, New York City
Designer: Project Projects, New York City
Printer: DataGraphic, Hempstead, NY
Printing process: Letterpress
