I'm Charlie ☀
My influences come from a broad range of experiences playing bass in a post punk disco band,
producing & mixing electronic music,
and selling coffee at my neighborhood farmers market.
Please reach out if you're interested in working together ☮
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My name's Charlie Michael, welcome to my site. I'm a graphic designer with a unique perspective on culture, generalizing in visual identity systems, illustration, type design, sound design, writing & recording music, 3D design and expressive coding for the web. Reach out so we can work together ☮
COACHELLA 2022
ART DIRECTION
VISUAL IDENTITY SYSTEM
I designed the visual identity system for the Coachella 2022 social media presence, under the creative direction of David Badounts at XX Artists. I created a system based on feeling & tone, and intentionally tried to limit a reflexive "rules-oriented" design approach to instead emphasize bold character and authenticity, while maintaining cohesion and distinction.
DYNAMIC VISUAL SYSTEM
For a client like Coachella it's crucial to construct a system that allows for flexibility. I designed
the rules for this system in such a way that I could create the requested assets, but would
also be ready to create assets on the fly responding to new asset requests during and reacting to the events
on stage and amongst the crowd. To that end, what I limited was "limits", using any combination of colors
and organic shapes made by tearing pieces of paper I could make an infinite variety of compositions.
The only real rule I used was "don't let shapes bleed off the canvas". This simple rule I found was enough to contain
what otherwise might seem like chaos, but this "gentle gathering of chaos" combined with following instincts
for color, form and composition was enough to create a distinct identity while also preventing the "rules"
I create from getting in my own way.
FOR BILLIE EILISH'S IG
Some Coachella artists used our assets to promote their performances on their own IG accounts.
YOUTUBE MUSIC
ART DIRECTION
VISUAL IDENTITY SYSTEM
I directed a team of 9 designers from London, NY & LA over a 4 month development process with YouTube Music to develop a new identity that speaks to Gen Z, under the Creative Direction of Bobby Solomon at XX Artists. 25 "moving posters" were developed, each with several dimensional formats and color variations, as a comprehensive system through which they present their coverage of the global music industry, while visually establishing themselves amongst their competitors as a leading brand in terms of cultural relevance and authenticity.
BLUR SHAPES
To create a graphic system that's recognizable without distracting from the music videos themselves,
I developed a system that uses simple shapes and blurs to temporarily obscure the type in ways that suggest different
kinds of "fantastic machines" that perform the job of introducing type and then shuffling it away in ways that
are easily understood by the eye and create individual narrative moments for each asset.
EXPRESSION WITH RESTRAINT
To create a system that is sophisticated yet bears no lack of character I relied on simple shapes
like squares and circles, and a restrained color palette. I used Google Roboto which is quite flexible
and allowed a variety of scale changes to create dynamic typographic moments.
CHIEF
VISUAL IDENTITY PROPOSAL
Chief is a women’s networking club open only to C-level executives. For this identity revision proposal, I studied their current website and photos of their interior to try and glean what their taste and values are, so that I would be able to anticipate how they would like to represent themselves through a visual identity. I believe the job of a graphic designer when creating an identity is to interpret their story so that we can give them something they love that they wouldn't have been able to articulate on their own. The word ‘power’ is invoked several times on their site, and in interviews with the owners, as well as ‘exclusivity’.
RESEARCH
The brand has already started to orient itself aesthetically through its choices for interior design. Each of the photos of its interior space features tropical plants such as broad leaf fig. The furniture has a ‘Restoration Hardware’ vibe. This demonstrates a cultural awareness and a desire to present themselves in a sophisticated and culturally relevant way.
COMPARABLES
Soho House is a social club for creatives, providing boutique dining and luxury hospitality experiences in cities around the world. The brand relies heavily on typography and photography, the logo is rarely used. Small bits of character in the sans serif chosen do most of the work in expressing the identity.
COMPARABLES
The Wing is a co-working space for women. It offers career development programs, as well as luxurious amentities. Unlike Chief, however, the brand strives to be inclusive, especially after receiving criticism for not providing enough access to lower income women. The logo is curvy and fun, keeping its aesthetic form being too ‘professional’.
COMPARABLES
Spring Place is a coworking space for creatives, with boutique and luxurious amenities. Price reductions are offered as incentive for younger members. The brand shares Chief’s taste for tropical plants, and its visual identity connotes cultural relevancy through a simple and elegant application of type.
VISUAL IDENTITY PROPOSAL
I based the concept for my proposal on simply a feeling of sophistication, luxury, and exclusivity, expressed through type and a limited color palette. The value of being a member is access to a professional network—for this reason I used dots as a subtle way to connote the feeling of a directory. For the smaller logo, I straightened the top of the “container” to distinguish it from a copyright symbol.
POWER + CULTURAL RELEVANCE
Based on an actual event held at Chief featuring Jennifer Lawrence, I imagined how a series of events at Chief might look as a system for promotion, balancing subtle typography with a connotation of exclusivity, power and cultural relevance.
SOCIAL MEDIA
I took the opportunity with social media to expand the color palette, adding small pops of color set against the main minimal motif. I imagined these subtle constrasts could be used to define a special series of lifestyle events, that Chief could introduce as a way for executives to bond outside of a strictly professional context.
BAM NEXT WAVE
MICA GRAD TYPOGRAPHY PROJECT
Next Wave is an annual performing arts festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Using their event details from 2019, this program is designed to capture the dichotomous nature of the event, of BAM and more broadly New York City itself, all places that are simultaneously refined and raw.
ILLUSTRATION / PUBLICATION DESIGN
Collaging photos from each show with loose line illustrations brings a sense of cohesion between individual performances,
as if they are all peforming together on the page, while demonstrating both rigorous minimalism and a playful tone togeher in one voice.
PAGODA GOODS LOOKBOOK
FASHION EDITORIAL
Pagoda Goods is a capsule collection featuring an original garment I designed, based on
Japanese workcoat patterns sourced from the Kappabashi neighborhood of Tokyo, and US Army Jackets.
The concept is to pay homage to my Grandfather who fought in WWII in the Pacific, but also spent time
post war in Japan and fell in love with the people there. This piece, as well as the photography and typography,
tell the story of the connections that were made in that historical moment and how they have influenced me.
ILLUSTRATION / PUBLICATION DESIGN
I was lucky enough to have copies of photographs my Grandfather took while in Japan, which I used in combination with film photos
I took to document the process of making the jackets, as well as to shoot the models.
THE ADVENTURES OF GLORP
MICA GD—MFA THESIS
My Graphic Design MFA thesis at MICA establishes a connection between Susan Sontag’s
Notes on Camp and meta– modernism, a sensibility described in Luke Turner’s Notes on
Meta Modernism as “informed naivety”. Using the vehicles of type design, image–making,
visual identity and poetry, I explored how this sensibility describes my passion for
campy fantasy novels from the 1960s, in the role of my Dungeons & Dragons character, GLORP.
The sensibility of informed naivety precisely describes my relationship with campy fantasy,
a genre that I’ve loved since I was young, despite my awareness that conventional culture
doesn’t consider these books, nor the art that accompanied them, “good”. Yet to me they
are glorious in their lack of self-awareness, a charm that comes from a bold disregard for
conventional taste. This is conveniently summarized in my observation that heroes on fantasy
book covers never wear pants.
“What does the pants–less fantasy hero do, when not posing heroically?”, is the question
I explored as GLORP, my character who I played for a year during the quarantine. Downtime
GLORP acts as a muse that I invoke throughout my thesis book, to read poetry and guide the
reader through all of the territories I roamed in my seach for my own interpretation of
radical authenticity.
INFORMED NAIVETY
The sensibility of informed naivety precisely describes my relationship with campy fantasy,
a genre that I’ve loved since I was young, despite my awareness that conventional culture doesn’t consider these books,
nor the art that accompanied them, “good”. Yet to me they are glorious in their lack of self-awareness,
a charm that comes from a bold disregard for conventional taste. This is conveniently summarized in my observation that
heroes on fantasy book covers never wear pants.
GLORP'S DOWNTIME
“What does the pants–less fantasy hero do, when not posing heroically?”, is the question I explored as GLORP, my character who I played for a year during the quarantine. Downtime GLORP acts as a muse that I invoke throughout my thesis book, to read poetry and guide the reader through all of the territories I roamed in my seach for my own interpretation of radical authenticity.
TYPE DESIGN / 3D MODELING
I like to consider graphic design as commercial art and myself as a commercial artist—commercials are hilarious, they provide so much insight into cultural assumptions, and serve as a familiar format that jumpstarts a viewer into your introduction of a fresh and nuanced perspective. Here, the arcane aesthetics of an imaginary occult book series contrast against a neighborhood grocery store, creating tension and dimension between elements both fantastic and mundane.
FAKE COMMERCIALS
Here I designed an imaginary commercial that feels like a conventional commercial, contrasting sharply against the established visual language of my thesis book. The product plays on the similarities between perscription drug names and space monsters of the 1960s. Zirtec, Zoloft and Zorak are similar phonetically, yet two are pills and one is an anthropomorphic mantis villain from Space Ghost (1966). I chose the name Zardoz for its poetic value, and for its association with the Sean Connery movie from 1974.
CULTURAL RESEARCH / COMMENTARY
This section, called Riddim, ends with GLORP in his role as muse, providing a transition into “sponsored content”—a long form commercial break that continues the exploration of advertisements and their role in creating culture.
JUNGLE JOOSE
IMAGINARY DRINK
Jungle Joose is an NFT I designed capturing the tone of UK rave culture, specifically the jungle scene of the early 90s.
SLURP
IMAGINARY SODA
What does GLORP drink? SLURP. An imaginary soda enjoyed by astral travelers, that serves as a type specimen for Sorcery, a font I designed.
BICICLETA
TYPE DESIGN
Bicicleta is a typeface I designed based on a presumably hand drawn phrase “hop dedik” from the cover of an album by Turkish singer Erol Büyükburç. Hop dedik means “cool it”. While figuring out the constructions for the rest of the alphabet, I was listening to a song by Brazilian musician Marcos Valle called Bicicleta, and was really just in love with it. It even has a music video, that I highly recommend (apart from the one that I made, subsequently). For some reason this song seemed to match the character of these letters— there was something about my environment being full of delightful Turkish and Portugese words making me feel like I was in a language immersion, traveling abroad and reading awesome signs in a language I don’t understand. So that became the direction, and my passion for vintage cycles, with all the European components, seemed to align itself perfectly.
XOR BOOKS
BOOK SERIES CONCEPT
XOR books is an imaginary occult book publisher, that serves as a type specimen for a font I designed called Xanadu. The arcane aesthetic of the books contrast with a radically mundane neighborhood grocery store.
BRASS TACKS
SOCIAL CAMPAIGN
Brass Tacks is a clothing and lifetstyle brand based around a sensitivity to "living room culture"—a casual vibe experienced through lighting, music, clothing, incense and an appreciation for cultural detail. The brand's aesthetic is flexible, interpreted in different ways for each piece but always capturing the same tone of playful expression. Influences are drawn from a wide variety of cultures reflecting the diveristy of the team, representing the Caribbean, Hawaii, Philippines and the US.
THE JOHN WATERS MUSEUM OF ART & PUBLIC RESTROOM
MICA GRAD VISUAL IDENTITY PROJECT
To create a narrative for a hypothetical museum curated by John Waters, I watched his movies, listened to interviews, and read his writing to glean what his values are, and what he appreciates in art. He credits his interest in art to a Miro print he bought as a child and its power to anger people.
In an Artnet News interview, John Waters explained, “The thing is, all the stuff that people hate about the art world, I love. I embrace all the elitism. I think it’s hilarious. I love impenetrable art writing.”
He goes on to describe his appreciation for Karen Sanders work, “She just took a blank canvas and left it outside until it got mold and everything, it’s really ugly. The problem with buying it is that the mold will spread in your house, and it’s toxic. So to me this is the best art piece I’ve seen all year. I’m still trying to figure out how I can own it without poisoning myself.”
ART THAT'S HARD TO LIKE / BATHROOMS
In this scene from Female Trouble, girl delinquents smoke in the bathroom. In his interview with Big Think, John Waters laments the loss of “pervert” bathroom culture to the seedy corners of the internet, where they now reside. Public bathrooms clearly have a cultural value that he appreciates and represents in his work. When showing his own art at the Baltimore Museum of Art, John Waters requested the museum’s bathrooms be named after him.
VISUAL IDENTITY PROPOSAL
My concept for a museum curated by John Waters is, “The John”, where the gallery is in the bathroom. The visual identity takes inspiration from default signage found in bathrooms. I also developed an illustration style that connotes installation manuals for hardware. Placing the art gallery in a public restroom creates a delightful contrast between the worlds of high brow art and random people who just need to use the bathroom—a setting ripe for unexpected collisions that I am sure John Waters would appreciate.
SUB-BRAND FOR EXHIBITION
Exhibitions at The John function with their own visual identities under the umbrella of the main identity,
with room to establish a unique experience to keep things fresh, while complimenting and remaining cohesive with the main identity's tone.