Deseret Tarot and a Swarm of Bees

We love to work with the AIGA. For those unfamiliar, the AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts) do for design what the Shriners do for brotherly love, and designers that are a part of the AIGA aren’t required to parade around driving miniature Corvettes while wearing funny hats. The AIGA strives to create a cultural forum and foundation for any professional designer. They are really quite awesome.

So, lucky us, the AIGA will be hosting next year’s conference in Salt Lake City. Yay! Like the passing of the Olympic torch, we were asked to provide a snippet of what Utah is all about so the AIGA could get a taste of what they’re in for. Naturally, we have an expert (of sorts) on all things Utah – Dan Christofferson. Dan created the artwork for this piece and we couldn’t have dreamed a better result.

Dan is super zealous when it comes to the interesting, if not at times absurd, Utah history. I’m sure most people think they have an idea of the goings on around here because of a certain HBO show, but rest assured, we’re pretty sure that most of us don’t have multiple wives, invest in reservation casinos, nor do we have grandmothers hustling parrots across the border. However, we do have some wacky history.

An excerpt from the piece:

An engorged seagull, a solid gold railroad spike, a cryptic alphabet…Within this deck of cards, the AIGA Salt Lake Chapter has gone through great lengths to unearth and translate the six most sacred and intriguing symbols of this culture.

Printing this piece involved some extra, fine-tuning. Lucky for us we’re equipped with the Heidelberg ‘S’ Cylinder press that can churn out an 16″x24″ print (actually it can print up to about 19″x27″). We then die-cut it and hand-rounded the corners. We’re not going to lie, registration on this double-sided, 4 color piece was no walk in the park. We used Dur-O-Tone Butcher Off White paper that was kindly donated by French Paper. Also, obtaining consistent ink coverage on a sheet this large is always a challenge. It’s pieces like this that make our hearts swoon.

We’re excited to have the AIGA come to our humble Salt Lake City. We’ll be welcoming everyone with open arms, swarms of bees, some long-haired hit man, and our 55 wives.