Polymode is a bi-coastal, queer, and minority-owned graphic design studio leading the edge of design with thought-provoking work for clients across the cultural sphere. We collaborate with innovative businesses, community-based organizations, and those shifting the world through social justice. By advocating for clear and transparent structures of communication, compensation, and relationships, Polymode creates a radical approach to design where the product emerges from a process of mutual respect and enjoyment. Our team promotes ecological and social sustainability in and out of the studio. Polymode’s core principles are to ignite minds, impact hearts, and uplift marginalized voices, through poetic research, design, and educational initiatives.

Our specialties include books, curation, education, exhibition, identities, interfaces, motion, publications, visual design, websites, workshops, and writing. We operate between the complexity of designed systems and lived experience—our core principles of visual expression, media adaptability, and typographic function.

We operate with the ethos of Studio as family.

Poetic Research

Poetic research takes into account the factual with the formal, the universal with the outsider, the sacred, the mystical, the cerebral prophet, and the fool. Let it be lofty, let it be magical and ancestral, let it be sensory, let it be funny with a divine kiss of queerness. It holds the space of a project searching for the details in archives, footnotes, and marginalia within the great force of history. Finding the tone of voice and incorporating form as a mode of thought—true, but it also just comes down to us wanting to make cool shit. Our poetics unearth and amplify; remember connections and lineages; shapes grids, structures information, and clarifies content. It is not all woo woo, sometimes it asks how many words fit, what is a realistic timeline, or how to save money. Research guides Polymode and its clients in making with a question.

Silas Munro

Partner

Silas Munro is a partner of Polymode, a studio that leads the edge of contemporary graphic design through poetic research, learning experiences, and making cool shit for clients in the cultural sphere, innovative businesses, and community-based organizations. Past collaborations include the City of LA Mayor’s Office, Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, Mark Bradford at the Venice Biennale, and MoMA. Munro’s writing appears in the book, W. E. B. Du Bois’s Data Portraits: Visualizing Black America published by Princeton Architectural Press. The book is covered by articles in Smithsonian Magazine, The New Yorker, and Black Perspectives. Munro has been a visiting critic at MICA, RISD, and Yale. He is particularly interested in the often unaddressed post-colonial relationship between design and marginalized communities. Munro holds an MFA from CalArts and a BFA from RISD, where he met Brian Johnson and began collaborating. Munro is Founding Faculty and Chair Emeritus at Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Brian Johnson

Partner

Brian Johnson is a partner of Polymode where he focuses on creative direction, design production, writing, and teaching. Born into a family of printers, Johnson is deeply invested in the production of good design without the expense of sacrificing our humanity or environment. He is a member of the Monacan Nation and holds a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. He has guest lectured at the School of Visual Arts, Washington University, University of California Santa Barbara, and the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University. His recent clients have been Glenn Kaino Studio, the Getty Museum, Studio Museum Harlem, Pulitzer Art Foundation, Phaidon Press, The New Museum, and the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum where his writing appears in Willi Smith: Street Couture. His most recent publication: Queering the Grid: Reading Codes in Dan Friedman's Teachings (with Silas Munro) has led him to his current design writing research on Friedman’s 1994, Radical Manifesto, which will be approaching its thirty year anniversary.

Randa Hadi

Associate Partner

Randa Hadi is a Kuwaiti designer, researcher, architect, and informal archivist who uses her positionality as an Arab immigrant to explore the interweaving of themes relating to Arab identity, belonging, and representation. Her work is deeply rooted in visualizing the multiplicity in narratives for clients like The New York Times, Airbnb, the Brooklyn Museum, Storefront for Art and Architecture, Frye Art Museum, Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Art Gallery of Ontario whose recent exhibition catalog What Matters Most: Photographs of Black Lives was awarded AIGA’s 50 books 50 covers in 2022. As an Associate Partner at Polymode, she is interested in getting lost in the archive: uncovering, unearthing, and inspiring her design practice that is nuanced, detailed, and multi-vocal.  Randa received her MA in graphic design from North Carolina State University with her thesis “A State of (Betweenness): Narrating Transnational Family Histories Through a Dynamic Digital Archive,” her BA in architecture from the University of Miami, and is a producer and educator for BIPOC Design History. Email her at randa@polymode.studio

Edgar Casarin

Designer and Animator

Edgar Casarin is a designer and animator who uses alternative methods and processes to inform his design. Edgar is very excited about finding new ways of making, whether that be through new technology, materials, or media. He likes to challenge contemporary design rules, pushing the boundaries of Eurocentric views on "good design". Edgar's multi-media expertise has been beneficial to clients like A24, AirBnB, Lumber Room, Inglewood Open Studios, and more. Edgar has also been supporting the internal brand at Polymode, leading projects like A Typeface Like Mine. He is also a Producer and Teacher's Assistant for BIPOC Design History's Incomplete Latinx Stories of Diseño Gráfico. Edgar received his formal design education at Otis College of Art and Design in 2022. Email him at edgar@poly-mode.com

Kris Nuzzi

Executive Assistant

Kris Nuzzi is a Brooklyn-based arts administrator, project manager, and garden designer. She is the executive assistant at Polymode, the director of Pavel Zoubok Fine Art, and a consultant for The Ford Foundation Gallery. Recent collaborations include the Art Production Fund at Rockefeller Center, Nuvola Lavazza, Visual AIDS, Howl Arts, and Hashimoto Contemporary, creating ambitious installations and showcasing artists working in a range of media. Along with Sur Rodney (Sur) she co-curated NOT OVER: 25 Years of Visual AIDS at La MaMa Galleria. She was the recipient of the 2012 Lori Ledis Curatorial Fellowship at BRIC and was the 2008 Curatorial Fellow at Artists Space. Nuzzi received her BA in Art History from Pratt Institute and her MFA in The Art Market/Exhibitions from FIT. Email her at kris@poly-mode.com.

Sadeem Yacoub

Designer

Sadeem Yacoub is a bilingual graphic designer, fluent in both English and Arabic, whose intuitive approach to design has been refined through years of education and experience. She holds a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) from the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) and a Bachelor of Science (BSc) in Architectural Design from Cardiff University, UK. Hailing from a cosmopolitan background, with roots in both Sudanese and Russian cultures, Sadeem's practice is deeply influenced by her diverse heritage. As a politically engaged designer, she focuses her work on her homeland, Sudan, exploring themes of shared cultural experiences, women's empowerment, and social justice. Sadeem's passion for education and design history is evident in her research and teaching pursuits, where she seeks to impart knowledge and foster understanding of the intersection between culture, identity, and design. Her creative journey is driven by a determination to create, express, and, most importantly, represent the voices of her community in response to the current socio-political climate.

Alumni

Michelle Lamb

Senior Designer

former senior designer

Audrey Davies

Studio Manager

Audrey Davies is the Studio Manager of Polymode, leading the internal operations of our studio since she joined in 2019. In her current role, she lends her detailed oversight of projects and clients to producing and managing our most complex design projects. In addition to studio and project management, she develops contracts, forecasts time, and coordinates schedules. She serves as the main point of contact for clients both old and new. 
Internally, she spearheads our internship program for Polymode and BIPOC Design History. Her educational background is wide ranging, studying photography and film, design theory, and hand craft. She maintains a silversmith practice, and divides her time between Los Angeles and Stockholm, where she continues to study and refine her craft. Email her at audrey@polymode.studio