Andrea Hyde’s stellar identity for International Pop is as clever as it is original

Pop art seems to be indefatigable. If Andy Warhol’s shadow isn’t looming large, it’s Roy Lichtenstein’s or Richard Hamilton’s. If anyone is practised enough for the task of designing the catalogue and identity for the the current International Pop exhibition at the Walker Art Center without merely resorting to the movement’s tropes, it’s Andrea Hyde. Since graduating from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD) in 2005, Andrea has worked steadily on both commercial and cultural commissions, with a focus and real flair for the latter.

After getting her start as an intern at Honest and later working as a senior designer at other agencies, her portfolio has slowly swelled with excellent and exciting work, including a book for Francesco Vezzoli’s 2007 exhibition and performance at the Guggenheim, and perhaps most impressively, she has been working with the Walker Art Center since 2009 designing identities, collateral and books for more than forty exhibitions.

Her winsome identity for the current pop art show at the Walker Art Center is as considered as it is original. Like the exhibition itself – which seeks to broaden pop art’s scope – Andrea’s approach to the design challenges obvious expectations. The freshness of her design is most palpable in the catalogue cover and the exhibition posters. Using an eye motif, the former plays on an abstracted rebus to spell out “I-Pop” and becomes one of several through lines of the campaign, whilst for the exhibition posters, Andrea has juxtaposed the cultural realities of the pop era with contemporary life.

The posters in particular accentuate pop art’s lasting resonance as bound up in modern communication, citing, among other things, many aspects of social media as pivotal in pop’s wide reach. “Before Tumblr, there was collage,” reads one poster. “Before Snapchat, there were snapshots,” says another. The clever and incisive campaign continues in this vein. Going from strength to strength, Andrea’s ideas are matched in the design itself, which happens to look as good as it is thoroughly thought out.