by Laura Pearson

Nolen Strals and Bruce Willen are not the sort of people who live by the principle “Do one thing and do it well.” Instead, the Baltimore-based graphic designers—guided by a solid work ethic and an ability to not take themselves too seriously—do tons of things and do them well. Visit the homepage of Post Typography, their design studio, and you can scroll through a colorful allcaps list of their specialties, including, but not limited to:

graphic design, lettering, logo, illustration … Vandalism, punk rock, video, sandwich making … Teaching, editing, beard growing, book covers … Song parodies, conceptual fonts, pattern mixing, pun incorporation …

(As a fellow pun incorporator, I am particularly impressed by this latter type o’ specialty; call me a dingbat or whatever, but I find it fontastic. (Also, as a fellow pun incorporator, I included four typographic puns in the previous sentence, as per Strals’ request. Apologies to anyone whose specialty is HATING WORDPLAY.)

Strals and Willen launched Post Typography in 2001 when they were undergraduates at the Maryland Institute College of Art. It began with an anti-design manifesto—likely borne of art-school-bureaucracy-related disillusionment and a desire to do away with lame typographic conventions. In it, the two designers called for “an overthrow of the Typocracy” and the ultimate realization of “a socially aware and vibrant typographic freedom.” “We are the children of the Desktop Publishers,” they wrote, “and the siblings of the rebel youth who scratched the logo of their favorite band into the cover of their math book. We are the 32-oz. Big Gulp of Typography! We are the Times New Romans!”

In 2007, the two friends set out to incorporate Post Typography as a full-time design studio. Embracing both a punk-style DIY approach (they do messy, hand-drawn rock posters) and clean, digitally based projects (they do illustrations for The New York Times), Strals and Willen have honed their collective ability to brainstorm and execute consistently rad design solutions. Above all else, they seem to embrace collaboration.

This collaborative vibe translates to other disciplines as well. Their biggest project outside of Post-Typography is the post-punk band Double Dagger, in which Strals provides vocals, Willen plays bass, and their friend Denny Bowen drums. This spring, the band (which is named after a typographic symbol used to indicate a footnote—of course), recently put out a wellreceived second LP, MORE, on Thrill Jockey. I spoke with Strals and Willen the day after they returned from an epic Double Dagger tour and were diving back into some design projects. We discussed collaboration, MySpace, and their upcoming typography handbook, Lettering & Type. It goes without saying, but I’m really looking forward to this fine print. (Groaaan.)

Laura Pearson: When you get back from a big Double Dagger tour, do you just jump right back into your graphic design work or are you keeping track of projects while you’re on the road?

Bruce Willen: We keep track of our work a little bit on tour. Before we leave, we try to make sure stuff is off our plates, but there are a couple of projects that we have to keep our eyes on and stay in communication with clients about. This time we did a pretty good job of getting things done before we left.

LP: Well, that’s impressive, because it seems like, with Post Typography, you guys have a lot of things going on at once. When you first met, did you anticipate that your collaboration would become this full-time deal?

BW: I don’t think we initially realized that it’d be like this. We started collaborating on stuff with our old band [League of Death] when we were in college—just making posters and things like that. From there, it evolved into doing other projects, like posters for the Johns Hopkins Film Festival.

LP: When you guys first met, was there something that appealed to you about each other’s design aesthetic or creative approach?

BW: Nolen had been screenprinting posters for rock shows in Baltimore. They were all over the place. Before I even met him, he gave me a poster for a show that he’d been promoting, so I was definitely familiar with what he was doing.

Nolen Strals: And we had classes together. The thing about Bruce’s work that appealed to me was the fact that it was highly conceptual. It was more ideabased, and he wasn’t just trying to make stuff look cool.

BW: I think we realized early on that we shared a similar approach. Our work wasn’t about just stylizing a thing. It was [based] more on the environmentor the starting point or some sort of initial idea.

LP: Have you ever had any significant disagreements about how best to approach a certain project or even whether to work with a certain client? Or are you usually pretty much on the same page?

BW: I think the vast majority of the time we’re on the same page.

NS: Yeah.

BW: There are always cases where we disagree about something, and we both usually feel pretty strongly about our work or our ideas. On the rare occasion when we want to go in divergent directions, things can get a little tense. We’ll eventually work it out.

LP: Are there projects that you’re especially proud of that you’ve worked on recently?

BW: In the spring we finished writing a book [Lettering & Type] that we’re definitely proud of. It’s through Princeton Architectural Press. They have this series of design books called The Design Briefs that includes Thinking with Type by Ellen Lupton and DIY: Design It Yourself . . . They’re small, affordable design handbooks. Ellen, the editor, approached us and asked us if we’d be interested in writing a book on lettering and type design. We weren’t totally sure at first, just because we’d never written a book. We definitely think a lot about our work and about other people’s work, but at the same time, we’re not necessarily design critics or design writers. So at the beginning we were a little hesitant to take on the project, but then we thought, “Hey. Why not?”

LP: I like what I’ve seen from that publisher.

BW: Yeah, that was a big selling point for us. If it were a publisher that we weren’t excited about, we probably wouldn’t have wanted to do it. We spent the entire year working more or less full-time on the book—doing research, writing it,and contacting the various contributors. And then of course, we also designed the book, because we wouldn’t want to write it and then have someone else design it. It was a pretty major undertaking.

LP: Returning to Double Dagger, so you used your graphic design background as kind of a launching point with the band, but since then, you’ve sort of abandoned the graphic design themes?

NS: We’d sort of exhausted that angle, and it had run its course. We didn’t want to keep doing the same thing.

LP: I was enjoying the fact that you wrote on your MySpace that “real bands have real websites,” because I feel like, with social networking and stuff, some of that attention to design has gotten lost.

BW: Definitely. Oh yeah. I mean, we resisted having a MySpace page for awhile. We had a website since the band was probably two months old. It’s one of those things that we felt like we needed to do ourselves. It was within our power to design and code it ourselves, so we thought it was important. It’s kind of annoying, but having a MySpace page is required for bands. NS: It’s kind of a necessary evil.

BW: Well, to some extent, there’s sort of a backlash against MySpace. I think more bands are trying to have actual websites now, just because there’s so much more aesthetic control, so much you can do with it.

LP: Are there any bands whose design approach you really admire?

BW: There’s definitely a handful of bands that have a really strong aesthetic and are doing cool stuff. Do you know Seripop or Serigraphie Populaire? They’re actually kind of similar to us. They’re Canadian designers and printers living in Montreal. Chloe [Lum] and Yannick [Desranleau] are the two members of Seripop, and they’re also in a band called AIDS Wolf. They design all of their own shirts and albums and buttons and everything else. It’s great.

LP: Do you guys feel like Baltimore a good place to be what you’re doing now?

BW: Yeah. As far as Post Typography goes, I would say most of our clients are in other cities. So I guess in terms of money and being able to support ourselves doing this work, Baltimore isn’t necessarily our “base.” I mean, thanks to the Internet, we can present ourselves internationally. We’ve done work for clients overseas and all around the country.

NS: But there’s definitely a creative energy in the city.

BW: Definitely. And the good thing about that, too, is that occasionally we’re able to get other Baltimore artists involved in our projects.

LP: What projects do you guys have coming up next? Are you going to take a little breather from Double Dagger for a minute, or at least from touring?

BW: Yeah, we don’t have any tour dates coming up. We’re playing a couple shows this month, and there are a few other things, like late summer or early fall, that we’re working on. Our focus for the next couple weeks is getting caught up.

LP: I’m assuming, as the Big Gulps of Typography, you totally will.