Moniker’s crisp and colourful laser cut posters for Designer Fund

When Designer Fund needed a set of 12 posters for its internal speaker series it approached San Francisco-based design and branding studio Moniker with an open brief. “The posters needed to find a balance between abstract and literal for various reasons,” says Brent Couchman, founder of Moniker. “The biggest being the fact that speakers could change and drop out due to scheduling. Rather than hinging the posters on the speakers, we agreed on certain topics that could act as the brief for each poster.”

The posters combine strict geometries with depth, each design is unique but readable as part of a series. The themes were developed using simple shapes and Moniker made the decision to evolve the preceding vector-based artwork with designs that explored the concepts with physical materials. “Paper was chosen for its availability and we chose Colorplan papers specifically for their bright and bold range of colours. After designing several versions of the posters we created renders to get an idea of how the compositions would work and how best to light them,” says Brent. “Once we had the idea approved we moved pretty fast, having the paper laser cut, then assembling and photographing over several days.”

Once the designs had been finalised, finding a company that could offer the precision that Moniker needed to execute the project was problematic. “Many laser cutting shops were unwilling to do a random and small project,” says Brent. “We finally found someone in Oakland but getting the huge sheets of paper to them was challenging. Once we had the pieces cut and assembled we saw we needed a few more to make the posters work correctly, so it was back to the laser cutter again.”