10th Annual Typography Exhibition
“i’m all ears”:
10th Annual Typography Exhibition
November 15, 2025 to January 15, 2026
Gallery 295, UTA Fine Arts Building
Gallery 295 on the second floor of the UTA Fine Arts Building showcases the Tenth Annual Typography Exhibition of works created by students in Advanced Typography class during the Spring and Fall 2025 semesters. The show brings together posters, postcards, and large-scale wayfinding signage prototypes that explore the expressive range of typography and its capacity to build identities across print and digital media.
Exhibiting designers include: Roselyn Barbosa-Vizcaino, Sophia Ford, Jorja De Guzman, Ashley Guzman, Emma Kinser, Kathy Le, Kiara Massey, Jacqueline Nava, Erin O'Brien, Vanhvilay Souriyachack, Tra Tran, Anthony Truong, Arlette Villegas, and Ashley Wetmore.
The exhibition is organized by the UTA Visual Communications faculty member Gladys Chow, with the visual identity designed by Erin O'Brien, whose concept "i’m all ears" was selected through a departmental review of the top three student proposals.
Gladys Chow reflects on the process of selecting and refining the exhibition’s visual identity:
“Creating and designing the visual identity for the exhibition is a major project in the ART 3355: Advanced Typography course. From the 53 students enrolled in the Spring and Fall semesters, the top three designs were selected and then sent to all members of the Visual Communication Design faculty, the Visual Resources Curator, and the Assistant Director of the Gallery at UTA, who voted on their top choice for the exhibition theme.
Once a design is chosen, I meet with the student to discuss the revisions and the additional promotional materials needed for the exhibition. Because this phase happens after the class project has officially ended, the student spends a significant amount of extra time to revise and prepare the designs to go 'live.'”
Erin O'Brien describes how the idea emerged:
“Funny enough, the idea for this identity came together very slowly. I was falling behind in class because nothing I came up with felt right. I knew I didn’t want anything that just said ‘type’ or ‘font,’ because that felt too easy. I wanted something that got to the core of what typography really is – the small details that make it work.
So I started digging into typography terms, from tittles to baselines. I played around with names like ‘What’s the Baseline,’ ‘Tittle Tail,’ ‘Heads or Tails,’ and ‘I’m All Ears.’ I really loved ‘What’s the Baseline,’ but ‘I’m All Ears’ had more room to grow into a full identity.
Once I started working on the postcard, everything clicked. I realized I could use not only ‘ears,’ but other type terms across different deliverables, and that’s when it all started to come together. For anything that broke away from the baseline, I wanted to match the playful jumble of the title letters and make it all feel fun and lively.
I put ears on everything on purpose – to exaggerate the concept, tie it back to the title, and make the whole thing literally ‘all ears.’ Beyond the type reference, I also wanted the title to reflect the spirit of the show. It’s not just about typography, but about paying attention to all the student work as a whole.”
The poster identity created by O’Brien for the Annual Typography Exhibition embraces a playful typographic language rooted in the anatomy of letterforms, color and scale. Oversized glyph fragments in chartreuse and electric blue contribute to a lively, high-contrast composition. The title “i’m all ears” leans intentionally off balance, its tilted and punctuated with illustrated “ears” letters highlight the small but crucial parts of the type anatomy. O’Brien’s palette consists of vibrant lime, magenta, and cyan against a deep black background. This reinforces the exhibition’s exploratory, youthful tone, and most importantly amplifies the legibility. The dotted texture applied to the letterforms references printmaking screens – bringing analog and digital typographic contexts together. ‘Listening’ to the nuances of typography, the overall design invites viewers to explore the show with curiosity and attention.
Erin O'Brien studies Visual Communications Design student at the UTA Art & Art History Department. As the Director of Marketing and Co-Head of Communications for the AIGA UTA Student Chapter, she has previously created promotional materials for student-led events including Spookathon 2025 and Design Expo 2025.
