Emily Cohane-Mann

To generate excitement and support for its grand opening, Planet Word, DC’s new immersive museum of words and language, needed a direct mail piece that could be created fast and still make a big impact. I came up with the idea for an illustrated calendar – the colorful imagery celebrated the museum’s opening in the historic Franklin School building, and the calendar gave recipients a reason to keep the poster hanging up on their walls, a vibrant reminder of the museum.

That mailer was such a success that the calendar became a tradition. The following year’s calendar design embellished the numerals “2021” with elements of DC’s famous cherry trees in all seasons, woven through with seasonal vocabulary words stamped in gold foil. For 2022’s calendar, I created hand-drawn text and worked with another talented illustrator to create an elaborate design showing the power of language.

Designed for Eighty2degrees design studio.

As part of a larger project adding visual excitement throughout their buildings, the Capital Area Food Bank wanted to give their volunteer area some attention. I led the design for this area that sees thousands of visitors a year, creating a thirty-foot long floor-to-ceiling annotated illustration showing the process of bringing food from farm to table, a set of dimensional panels showcasing stakeholder stories, and an illustrated thank-you wall to match.

These spaces educate volunteers about the larger context of their work, give them a sense of the human impact of that work, and express appreciation. These vibrant, welcoming graphics bring the volunteer area to life and reinforce the Food Bank brand.

Designed for Eighty2degrees Design Studio.

Working Films, an organization that uses the inspiring power of documentary films to advance social justice and environmental protection, had outgrown their existing logo, and came to me to help refresh and expand the visual brand. They needed an update that was functional, had some continuity with their previous logo, and captured the energy around their work at the intersection of film and activism.

We arrived at a logo design with similar typography to their existing logo, but that swapped out their original rather literal image of work boots with a more abstract icon — its four simple lines suggest both a shout, representative of the speaking up work of advocacy, as well as the light emanating from a film projector.

The larger brand needed to be flexible enough to use alongside marketing materials for all kinds of documentary films, simple enough for all members of their busy staff to use effectively, and vivid and memorable enough to capture attention and help build organizational clout. This was accomplished with a palette of super-bright primary colors, textural diagonal line patters to echo the lines in the logo, and clean and simple layouts that could be easily re-used and updated to accommodate all kinds of content.

Casey Trees asked us to take the content for their book about tree planting on structures and turn it into a showpiece. Drawing inspiration from vintage field notebooks and botanical specimen labels, I developed a design that hints at the history of urban forestry and translates it into something fresh and unstuffy. The typography is classic and humane with touches of monospaced text, and the organic color palette and horizontal format let the custom photography shine. Small touches — bespoke icons, a subtle graph paper grid pattern motif, a hand-drawn map, the slightly textured paper, the tactile feel of the cloth-bound embossed cover — make the finished object feel truly special.

Designed for Eighty2degrees design studio.

The Capital Area Food Bank asked our team to create branding for their 40th anniversary gala — it needed to feel bright and exciting yet sophisticated, and it had to work within their existing brand. I developed a logo, taking cues from the geometric shapes in the organization’s logo, and a color palette that felt evocative of the fresh fruits and vegetables that the food bank helps their clients access. Our team collaborated to develop signage, printed collateral, large displays, and projections with colorful illustrations to create a rich, immersive experience fitting for the occasion.

Designed for Eighty2degrees design studio.

Our team was asked to redesign the website for the newest museum in DC: Planet Word, a highly interactive museum celebrating the power and fun of language. Beginning with the foundation of the museum’s visual brand and the existing site content, we built out new wireframes and developed a new look. The final product suits this first-of-its-kind museum: bold and colorful, with a sense of fun and sophistication, and touches of surprise throughout.

As lead designer on the project, I worked closely with my own team, the client, and a team of developers to bring the site to life, creating the design for the site’s homepage and basic content pages, headers and footers, mobile screens, a blog, input forms and checkout screens, museum event pages, a custom-illustrated map, suite of hand-drawn icons, and linework flourishes derived from typography and the museum’s architecture used in animations.

See the website: planetwordmuseum.org

Designed for Eighty2degrees design studio.

The Campaign Legal Center, a DC organization working for a more transparent, accountable and inclusive democracy, did an in-depth assessment of vote-by-mail systems in dozens of states, and needed a compelling design to present their findings. The report had narrative sections as well as content that called for data visualization. I built on the organization’s strong core visual brand to create a report design that would look sharp on screen, with visual scorecards for each state profiled and a color-coded overview map.

Designed for Eighty2degrees design studio.

To celebrate 30 years of work for Habitat for Humanity in Washington, DC, I helped create an engaging report showcasing the organization’s impact through thirty stories from homeowners, volunteers, staff, and leadership. I led the design from concept to photography direction to layout, and integrated existing brand colors and typography with a customized woodgrain pattern and line framework to evoke building materials and blueprints. In addition to the thirty narratives, the booklet includes an infographic with custom-drawn icons and a fold-out timeline of the organization’s history.

Designed for Eighty2degrees design studio.

Planet Word, DC’s museum of words and language, needed some custom merchandise to sell in their shop. I created the designs for these t-shirts, umbrellas, and water bottles that combine simple line drawings with text to create little puzzles to make visitors smile. Each design references an idiom. The insulated water bottles have 2-sided designs: “half empty”/”half full” and “hot potato”/”cool as a cucumber.” The umbrellas depict “foul (fowl) weather,” “tempest in a teapot,” and “every cloud has a silver lining.” T-shirts show “the pen is mightier than the sword,” “mover & shaker,” “gift of gab,” and “smart cookie.”

Designed for Eighty2degrees design studio.

I was approached to create a logo for Keymaker Analytics, a boutique data firm specializing in working with progressive causes. They needed a brand that was clean, professional, and not too tech-y to fit their bespoke approach. I created a logo, brand guide, website, and a suite of assets — an extended color palette, brand patterns, watermark icons, and a custom illustration — to give them a fully realized visual brand identity.

The company name lent itself to a memorable icon combining a key with the letter “K,” which paired nicely with a primary color palette of creams, gray-greens, and warm red. The geometric sans-serif of the logo text was balanced out with an additional slab serif typeface, giving the brand a distinctively timeless and sophisticated voice. The brand stands out in an ocean of slick neon and black data and tech logos, reinforcing Keymaker’s more personal and accessible process, and their focus on the real-world impact of their work.

View website: KeymakerAnalytics.com

The Outlaw Report, a prominent source for cannabis legislation news in the DC/MD/VA region, needed a refreshed logo and website to appeal to their hip, savvy audience. I worked with the client and web developer to get an in-depth sense of the existing website content and the direction we wanted to go for, and created a dramatic new look. The dark, sleek new site design avoids the pitfalls of the expected design tropes for both cannabis and legislative news with a sharp and sophisticated look punctuated with vivid touches of green and custom-drawn line icons.

Designed for Eighty2degrees design studio.

Our team was tasked with creating event branding and collateral for a philanthropic conference in Miami, playing off of the conference venue’s art deco architecture and the city’s tropical feel for a bright and engaging look. I created a comprehensive style guide (with a supporting color palette, typography, photo treatments, and patterns derived from illustrations custom-created for the conference), consulted on design for the website and promotional video, and designed environmental graphics, the program and other print collateral, and images for email and social media.

Designed for Eighty2degrees design studio.

Design and custom illustrations for series of infographics about the scope and impact of AFSC's farming work in New Mexico. With the help of these infographics, the program was able to successfully raise funding to continue their work.

Gaza Unlocked needed a branding system that could help them achieve their goal of sharing stories and raising awareness about the Gaza blockade, and would also work alongside the branding of their parent organization. Working closely with the Gaza Unlocked team, I developed a logo that feels bold and humane, and created collateral used across various events and campaigns.

Designed branding and collateral for the award-winning documentary "Care," that tells the hidden story of in-home care patients and providers and exposes cracks in the U.S. healthcare system. Working with an existing logo, I created new branding concepts and custom illustration based on the film, posters, social media and other web graphics, DVD packaging and on-screen menus, informational handouts and postcards, and screening kit materials.

Branding and layout for a series of reports and case studies that outline "shared security," an approach to international peace building work that reframes the notion of national security.

Design for a report on the 2016 actions at Standing Rock to protect the water and block the Dakota Access Pipeline, with images from photographer Hartman Deetz. Cover art and selected spreads.

Original relief print for the American Friends Service Committee's holiday card, inspired by the organization's annual Posada sin Fronteras event at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Making relief prints can be involved and painstaking, but it's also gratifying, and I occasionally have the opportunity to do custom prints in the course of my design work. One of my favorite examples is this relief print for AFSC's holiday card, inspired by the work that the organization does around human migration.

This was made with a combination of digital and analog processes. The initial sketches were done by hand, and then scanned and flipped digitally for transfer onto the carving block. Then the block was hand-carved and spoon-printed to create a black-and-white print. The print was scanned and digitally colored to create the art that was inserted in the layout, and the final cards were offset printed.

Invitation suites, greeting cards, and coasters, hand-printed on a century-old letterpress.