Henry Taylor: B Side

Published January 20, 2023

B Side is the title of Henry Taylor’s current solo exhibition, on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles, through April 30, 2023. Taylor is an artist and painter who lives and works in Los Angeles. The accompanying catalog was edited by Bennett Simpson, with contributions by Wanda Coleman, Karon Davis, Charles Gaines, Harmony Holiday, Bob Kaufman, Walter Price, Bennett Simpson, and Frances Stark; and features a conversation between Henry Taylor and Hamza Walker.

For the book design, Polymode picked two typefaces of local origin that both haven’t been featured on Fonts In Use before. For the title as well as headings and captions, the choice fell on Owners. This sans-serif family was drawn by Jeremy Mickel, taking inspiration from a quirky handdrawn grotesk he spotted on signs in public parks throughout Los Angeles. Extended to a whopping 110 styles, it was released in summer 2021 through MCKL, named after a word included in one of those signs. There are two subfamilies, Owners and Owners Text, both of which are used for the catalog.

The seriffed typeface used for text is an interesting one, too. Reynaldo (2018) is the work of Benjamin Woodlock, founder of the LA-based Abstract Office. Woodlock describes it as “an athletic slab-serif […] inspired by the antics of 19th century Clarendons”. With its sturdy serifs and the mix of sharp and rounded details, it looks a little like Dutch chocolate letters that were briefly exposed to the California sun. Reynaldo has a peculiar family structure: it comes in Serif (upright), Italic (right-leaning), and Lefty (left-leaning) styles, each in four weights. The images I’ve included in this post unfortunately don’t do a good job of showing this typeface in detail. I hope to add better images once they become available.

Owners is also used for the wall texts in the exhibition itself, as well as for posters sold by the museum, see the end of this post.

Poster featuring Henry Taylor’s See Alice Jump, 2011, © Henry Taylor, courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo by Joshua White.

Poster featuring Henry Taylor’s Cora, (cornbread), 2008, © Henry Taylor, courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo by Jeff McLane.

Inside the exhibition at MOCA

Owners in use for wall texts in the exhibition

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