Juanita J. Craft Civil Rights House and Museum

Isometric Studio
2023

The custom title typography evokes the energy of civil rights protest posters while guiding visitors through the various themes explored in the exhibition.
Placing the paragraph typography at eye level to ensure accessibility, we activated the full height of the gallery walls with larger typography and images, creating an immersive exhibit environment.
The custom typeface we designed was based on a silkscreen that Mrs Craft used to create protest signs.
The exhibit is as much about the history of the Civil Rights struggle as it is about the graphic design that came out of the era: in the form of flyers, posters, letters, and ephemera.
The last gallery is a Legacy Library, and typography on the window shades adds another layer of inspiration.

Isometric collaborated with the City of Dallas on a permanent exhibition for the newly renovated Juanita J. Craft Civil Rights House and Museum. The museum narrates the life and work of Juanita Craft, a pioneering activist who led the charge for equal rights and dignity for Black Americans—locally in Dallas and across the nation, establishing 182 chapters of the NAACP.

In 2018, a devastating flood wreaked havoc on the house as well as critical objects on display, many of which were preserved and cherished by Mrs. Craft herself. Isometric worked with a team of preservation architects, conservators, and city officials to curate, write, design, and install the new permanent display, elevating the house and objects to the stature of a world-class museum. The museum—slated to become the only site in Texas on the Civil Rights Trail—immerses visitors in eight decades of civil rights history, honoring Juanita Craft’s legacy by recreating her “house of power” as a contemporary site for memory, celebration, and activism.

In Juanita Craft’s lifetime, her house served as a home base for generations of young activists striving to find their place in the civil rights struggle. Mrs. Craft always said, “I had no children, so I adopted the world.” This exhibit continues the legacy of civic transformation, presenting a vast and complex history with clarity, while also ensuring accessibility for a range of audiences and ages.

The graphic design evokes the excitement of Mrs. Craft’s scrapbooks, deploying bold color, silhouette cutouts, and uplifting typography. The narrative tracks American history from enslavement and racial violence to legal victories and community liberation.

We created a custom typeface called Craft for the exhibit titles, based on lettering from the physical silkscreen Mrs. Craft and her “Craft Kids” used to print protest signs. The two weights of the typeface augment exhibition didactics, physical signage, and donor recognition with a distinctive sense of time and place.

Isometric Partner and Curator
Andy Chen
Isometric Partner
Waqas Jawaid
Isometric Content Director and Curator
Kate McBride
Design Director
Maria Loes
Senior Graphic Designer
Paolo Fabbri
Graphic Designer
Ana David
Architectural Designer
Abhishek Thakkar
Graphic Designer
Ingrid Schmaedecke
Architectural Designer
Daedalus Li
Design Director
Hannah Meng
Architectural Designer
Sumaia Alamoudi
Writer and Researcher
Marissa E C de Baca
Project Manager
City of Dallas, Office of Arts and Culture
Project Manager
Nikki Christmas
Project Manager
John Spriggins
Conservator
Lyzanne Gann
Conservator
Kimberly Crozier-Mitsche
Conservator
Kathleen Kiefer
Conservator
Cristiana Ginatta
Exhibit Coordinator
Lynn Rushton
Project link

Judges Choice: Nermin Moufti

Honorable Mention