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A graphic design firm generating its own projects, initiatives, and content while taking on limited client work. Run by Bryony Gomez-Palacio and Armin Vit in Bloomington, IN.

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Post
3421 E Latimer Rd
Bloomington, IN 47401

Phone
(917) 755-0750

Fax
(718) 228-6720

Email

Colophon

Headlines and wordmark
Druk Condensed XX Super by Berton Hasebe for Commercial Type.

Body
Neue Haas Unica by Toshi Omagari for Monotype. Served via fonts.com.

UCLLC logo
Custom lettering by Mark Caneso.

A Graphic Registry of Life & Death in Sons of Anarchy

SPOILERS AHEAD!

This poster is a celebration of one of the best shows on TV and the complex (and deadly) relationships between its cast of characters. All major characters — along with key secondary ones — are included and organized by affiliation. Links are made between them showing who are related by blood, who are connected by love (or sex), and who killed whom — and how.

Work began on this poster after the end of season six, once it was known that season seven would be the show’s final season. The first task was to figure out who killed who and the only way to do it was through a method as painful as getting your tattoo removed with a blow torch — true SOA fans will know what that means.

Spreadsheet that captures all the characters in the show (with a significant role) and lists their affiliation, season introduced, bonds to other characters, and, of course, who they killed or who killed them and how.

One of the challenges was how to make the poster more visual as it was going to be very dense with typography. Enter Taylor Goad, who designed minimal portraits of the main characters. One of the great things about SOA is that the characters have very particular hairdos and facial hair, so it was easy to capture their essence without getting too detailed.

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Character illustrations by Taylor Goad.

The spreadsheet covered the first six seasons and was more than enough data to start designing during the first episodes of season seven. As the season progressed and the death count got higher, the new developments were done straight on the poster. At first it was almost weakening how much information had to be placed and how many lines had to be drawn between the characters. There are over 100 kills and 140 characters represented in the poster.

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A broad evolution of the poster, from data dump to design to adjustments to final.

The poster is printed black, silver, and red on white paper and it turned out pretty great. You can buy a copy here.

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Final poster.
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The header typography (and the rest of the poster) uses Commercial Type’s Marian 1812 script font and Avondale Type Co.’s Finkl Pro.

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Plenty of detail shots from hereon down. And, seriously, major spoilers in these images if you haven’t finished watching the show.
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