The Office of Public Awareness, Division of Film, Radio, Television & Books, has recently begun issuing a series of limited-run silkscreen prints. These editions celebrate historic archival government and intergovernmental report cover designs from the 1960s through the 1980s. Often overlooked and forgotten, these modest and understated examples of Swiss and International Typographic Style—filtered through federal modernism and bureaucratic subject matter—can now be appreciated and analyzed from both artistic and historical perspectives.

Produced by hand in small runs at the SVA Printshop in Chelsea, Manhattan—America’s art gallery center—and printed on sustainable, archival-quality, museum-grade paper from French Paper Co. in Michigan, made using hydropower, these editions encourage a renewed perspective on these documents.

By presenting these works in a transformative manner, we hope to encourage viewers and readers to ask: What is art? What is the value of design? Why does a government design the way it does, and what do its aesthetic choices reveal about power structures?

We hope you can enjoy these provocations as much as you can appreciate the posters for their simple, unserious beauty.

Select prints—signed, stamped, and numbered—are available for purchase at the Tomato Lab Market. Editions are produced in small runs, so availability is limited.