Isometric Studio

NEW WORK: The exhibition’s graphic identity extends the restraint of the architecture through a contemporary typographic system. Custom typography with softened corners echoes the corporeal qualities of Semmel’s paintings while retaining the stark crispness of a Modernist presentation.

A gallery guide and fold-out poster featuring an interview with the artist and a reproduction of Sunlight (1978) were designed to support deeper engagement, extending the exhibition experience beyond the gallery walls.

Historically placed within private or intimate settings, sexually explicit artwork is often separated from collective viewing experiences. Joan Semmel sought to challenge this convention by presenting her work within a “public square” where audiences could encounter it together.

Isometric’s design inverts the relationship between public and private: Semmel’s monumental paintings surround the gallery perimeter, looking inward toward a central salon installation of museum collection works. The exhibition thus explores a critical and creative feminist dialogue across generations.

Isometric collaborated with The Jewish Museum to design the first major New York City retrospective of Joan Semmel, the influential American feminist painter whose five-decade practice has challenged conventions of sexual representation through boldly intimate self-portraiture.

Working closely with Semmel and the museum, Isometric developed a C-shaped gallery wall elevated on rounded piloti, a simple architectural gesture that frames sixteen monumental paintings along the gallery perimeter while creating an intimate salon-style space for nearly fifty museum collection works selected by the artist. The restrained design repositions Semmel’s practice within the expansive white-box context historically reserved for her male contemporaries, while ash wood benches inspired by her studio invite visitors to pause and engage with the exhibition.

Artwork © 2026 Joan Semmel / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Inspiring innovation across disciplines: along with a newly established layout and visual system, each year, we work with the Columbia Engineering team to conceptualize the alumni magazine cover and feature story designs with bespoke treatments that recur through the issue. For these, our goal is to elevate the foundational design ingredients — typography, color, photography — to the level of art, conveying to readers the aesthetic and functional power of engineering to transform a complex world.