Studio Loutsis builds a 12-part grid from an exhibition’s roster — The Brand Identity – Home of the Greatest in Graphic & Brand Design

Twelve designers, twelve grid sections. For OUTSIDE/IN, an exhibition presented by Hello Human and Lyle Gallery during NYCxDesign 2025, Brooklyn-based Studio Loutsis built an identity from a single structural premise: a grid whose dimensions are drawn directly from the curatorial roster. Each of the 12 divisions maps to one of the exhibiting designers, turning a layout device into a conceptual statement about how creative practitioners occupy, test and reconfigure the systems around them.

The exhibition itself grew from a shared instinct between its two presenting partners. Hello Human, a global PR company, and New York’s Lyle Gallery found themselves circling the same questions about access, belonging and who gets to define what counts as design. “Lin and I kept circling the same question – ‘what does it actually mean to belong in design, and who gets to decide?’ – and it felt natural to turn that into a real, physical platform for designers who are building powerful practices from the periphery,” Jenny Nguyen of Hello Human explains. Rather than hand-picking from existing networks, the curators issued an open call, receiving over 200 submissions. The final selection was guided by the clarity and depth of story behind each body of work. The roster grew to 13 during the process, one beyond the 12 the grid had been designed around, though at opening the exhibition featured 12 designers. That the grid didn’t need rebuilding to accommodate the change speaks to how it functions – as a flexible structural framework rather than a literal headcount.

Studio Loutsis began the engagement by reviewing the curatorial framework and identifying core themes through early creative sessions with both partners: belonging, visibility and the agency that comes with an outsider perspective. These conversations pointed toward a system that could hold a plurality of voices without hierarchy. The 12-part grid emerged as that system, but not as a rigid template. “Rather than being fixed, the grid adapts to the proportions of each piece, responding to the dimensions of different print and digital formats,” Taylor Loutsis of Studio Loutsis explains. “In that sense, the grid works less as a strict template and more as a responsive framework that holds the identity together.” Across applications, the grid’s 12 divisions flex to suit the format at hand – expanding on large-scale print, compressing on a social media post – while the underlying structure remains legible throughout.

What gives the system its character is the way imagery and typography deliberately cross the grid’s borders. Some elements sit neatly within their allotted sections; others bleed beyond them, refusing to stay contained. The decision about which elements should compress and which should escape was largely intuitive. “Conceptually, the images moving in and out of the grid reflect the exhibited designers pushing beyond traditional structures in society, whether related to class, race or other systems of power,” Loutsis shares. “The gesture becomes a subtle visual metaphor for crossing boundaries.”

Typographically, the identity is set in Dédale, a typeface by Thomas Bouville. The choice was deliberate and loaded with meaning. Andrew Burgess of Studio Loutsis points to how it navigates the two familiar typographic conventions of the art and design world: the old-style serif that signals institutional heritage, and the neutral sans serif that presents a contemporary evolution of that same institutional language. “While built on classical proportions, its letterforms introduce sharp joins, unconventional curves, and subtle distortions,” Burgess explains. “The tension between its traditional skeleton and idiosyncratic outlines sidesteps the typical typographic codes of the institutional art world while still feeling appropriate within an art and design context.” Studio Loutsis expanded on these idiosyncrasies further by breaking up the exhibition title to house the numerical system that tracks each designer, folding the type itself into the grid logic.

The colour palette needed to sit alongside a diverse range of practices, as the 13 designers span very different material and cultural territories. As we applied colours to each designer, we reviewed them collectively to make sure they remained distinct from one another,” Nana Said of Studio Loutsis explains, “while all following a colour palette that interrelated between hue and value,” Said notes. The result is a palette that gives each designer a distinguishable presence within a shared system.

When Studio Loutsis visited the gallery space at 24 Rutgers Street, they noticed something that connected the physical and graphic dimensions of the project unexpectedly. The gallery floor already contained a tiled grid system, and the designers’ objects were positioned on top of it. “We felt this abstractly echoed the conceptual grid, with the designers’ objects positioned on top of it, subtly suggesting the idea of breaking through the structure,” Loutsis explains. Because of this existing resonance, the studio chose not to impose the numerical grid onto the exhibition graphics themselves, allowing the gallery’s architecture to do that conceptual work instead.

The brief from the curators had been specific about what mattered and what to avoid. Lin Tyrpien of Lyle Gallery wanted a visual system flexible enough to hold very different practices while staying connected to the exhibition’s core idea of being inside or outside institutional structures. “What mattered most to me was that the identity could translate across every touchpoint, from the exhibition graphics in the space all the way down to the smallest printed pieces, and feel like a complete experience,” Tyrpien shares. “I really believe in the power of branding to further the story, and Studio Loutsis helped us bring another level of fidelity to the overall exhibition that made people take the show seriously from the first thing they encountered.”

Some of those individual assets took on a life of their own. The sticker sheets became a playful, budget-conscious way to bring personality into the physical exhibition, and the postcards – one for each designer, visually matched to the social media posts being published online – turned into collectables. “I had people coming by to pick up specific pieces they particularly loved, or of their friends’ piece,” Tyrpien recalls. “We had to re-print multiple times to keep up with the demand.” Visitors would share and tag the postcards on social media alongside the exhibited works, giving the show a second life beyond the gallery walls. What people encountered in the space was the same thing they saw online, creating a cohesion that extended the exhibition’s reach into places the curatorial statement alone could not have gone.