Joel Kern (JKDS)

︎ Environmental
︎ Identity
︎ Platform
︎ Media
︎ Index

This website contains the visual outcomes from the hybrid practice of Joel Kern. These works include in-progress and completed projects from various points in his career. Works included are from his tenure at Krewe, MTWTF, as well as freelance and self-authored works over the past 10 years. 

︎ Information

Equal Justice
Display Typeface

Client: Self-authored
Collaborators: JKDS
Status: Completed
Year: 2018
Tags: Identity

Based on the late 1800’s typeface named Equal Justice, this typeface was one of the few typefaces that survived from the Horse and Buggy Printer of St. Lawrenceville, Louisiana. The original typeface had mono-spaced characteristics allowing for each of the uppercase letters to have a visual weight and proportion that was equal amongst them all. Due to this feature the face was named Equal Justice.

Reviving this typeface into a more modern assemblage was a way for me to make a subtle political statement. Over 200 years have passed and the idea of equal justice is just as important as it was then. Therefore, rebuilding this typeface became a way for me to speak to the current issues that face America’s equal justice system. To further support this idea I decide to showcase this typeface in the context of the American Constitution, more specifically, the Fourteenth Amendment. This amendment protects the laws of the equal justice in America. In addition to setting the Fourteenth Amendment in Equal Justice Revival I also chose to represent the significant court cases  that have lead to progressive changes for the Fourteenth Amendment and equal justice in the United States.