michael@counterspace.net

Site design by Counterspace

Web development by Yay Brigade

Pragmatic Grotesk by Greg Lindy

 

Counterspace is a graphic design studio based in Los Angeles that specializes in editorial and identity work for cultural institutions.

Counterspace fosters collaborative interaction with clients during the design process, with the goal of contributing to an ongoing critical discussion, while developing distinctive design solutions.

Counterspace appreciates the book as a physical object in the real world, and enjoys watching them age.

Counterspace believes in designs’ role as both a cultural and commercial tool, and endeavors to mesh the pragmatic and the poetic in its designs, developing each project without a predetermined idea of its visual qualities—the formal and conceptual resolution of each project is always specific to the content and context of that particular project and the client’s individual needs.

Counterspace is the space in which subtle forces work, which are not amenable to ordinary measurement.

Counterspace was formed in 2000 by Michael Worthington as a small-scale collaborative studio with a mission to produce innovative and intelligent graphic design for cultural clients. Michael Worthington teaches in the Graphic Design Program at the California Institute of the Arts, and was the program co-director from 1998 through 2005 and from 2008 through 2015. He received a BA(Hons) from Central Saint Martins School of Art (1991) and an MFA in Graphic Design from CalArts (1995). His work has been published widely and exhibited in Belgium, Italy, England, the Czech Republic, El Salvador, Japan, France, China and the US, and he has lectured in Korea, Belgium, Holland, Australia, England, France, Mexico and across America. He has been a judge for the California Design Biennial, Output, the AIGA and the ADC and curated the design show “Two Lines Align” at REDCAT and edited the accompanying publication. His writing has been published in Eye, Print, Slanted, and Threaded magazines, and various design books, including Earthquakes, Mudslides, Fires and Riots: California and Graphic Design 1936–86. Michael runs the Graphic Design Poster Archive at CalArts, he edited and published the book Inside Out & Upside Down: Posters from CalArts 1980–2019, and curated the accompanying exhibition at REDCAT Los Angeles.

Yasmin Khan Gibson was a partner in Counterspace from 2005 to 2009.

Other Counterspace collaborators, freelancers, interns, custom type designers and co-designers, over the years, have included:

Tasheka Arcenaux
Brett Banta
Eli Carrico
Cassandra Chae
Ania Diakoff
Max Erdenberger
Stefano Giustiniani
Micah Hahn
Erin Hauber
Tracy Hopcus
Roman Jaster
David Karwan
Mina Koh
Tom Kracauer
Jiwon Lee
Hye Jin Lee
Megan Lynch
Kaoru Matsushita
Julie Mattei
Megan McGinley
Christopher Morabito
Emily Morishita
Silas Munro
Gretchen Nash
Sudeshna Pantham
Joe Prichard
Jesse Lee Stout
Jon Sueda
Jae Hyouk Sung
Tiffanie Tran
Caelin White
Ben Woodlock