KAJE is a nonprofit artist-run art space in Gowanus, Brooklyn, dedicated to experimental forms of artistic inquiry that resist easy categorization and exist outside the demands of the commercial market. Since opening in 2018, the space has developed a reputation for ambitious programming that moves fluidly between research, performance, publishing, screenings, and participatory exhibitions. Other Means has continued to evolve KAJE’s visual identity and website since redesigning it in 2021.
Rhymes with GARAGE
Led by artist Kate Levant, KAJE approaches the exhibition space as a testing ground for new systems of display, collaboration, and collective thinking.
Occupying the outer edge of Gowanus, one of New York City’s last visibly industrial neighborhoods, KAJE sits among shuttered factories, warehouses, fabrication shops, auto-body garages, and canalside infrastructure. Caught between artistic reuse and rapid redevelopment, its surroundings mirror the spirit of its programming.
Gowanus’s industrial landscape provided a starting point for the identity. Its working infrastructure reflect a culture of utility and endurance echoed in the bold graphic language of industrial signage.
The logo borrows the ballooning proportions of athletic wordmarks, where letterforms swell and flex to suggest a kind of industrious severity. Set in Hobo, the form doesn’t “flex”; it is “squeezed,” becoming softer and more playful.
Led by artist Kate Levant, KAJE approaches the exhibition space as a testing ground for new systems of display, collaboration, and collective thinking.
Occupying the outer edge of Gowanus, one of New York City’s last visibly industrial neighborhoods, KAJE sits among shuttered factories, warehouses, fabrication shops, auto-body garages, and canalside infrastructure. Caught between artistic reuse and rapid redevelopment, its surroundings mirror the spirit of its programming.
Gowanus’s industrial landscape provided a starting point for the identity. Its working infrastructure reflect a culture of utility and endurance echoed in the bold graphic language of industrial signage.
The logo borrows the ballooning proportions of athletic wordmarks, where letterforms swell and flex to suggest a kind of industrious severity. Set in Hobo, the form doesn’t “flex”; it is “squeezed,” becoming softer and more playful.
Led by artist Kate Levant, KAJE approaches the exhibition space as a testing ground for new systems of display, collaboration, and collective thinking.
Occupying the outer edge of Gowanus, one of New York City’s last visibly industrial neighborhoods, KAJE sits among shuttered factories, warehouses, fabrication shops, auto-body garages, and canalside infrastructure. Caught between artistic reuse and rapid redevelopment, its surroundings mirror the spirit of its programming.
Gowanus’s industrial landscape provided a starting point for the identity. Its working infrastructure reflect a culture of utility and endurance echoed in the bold graphic language of industrial signage.
The logo borrows the ballooning proportions of athletic wordmarks, where letterforms swell and flex to suggest a kind of industrious severity. Set in Hobo, the form doesn’t “flex”; it is “squeezed,” becoming softer and more playful.
KAJE’s visual identity is simple: squeezed Hobo for the logo, paired with Univers for all text. The system is defined by its wandering malleability, always in flux with the space’s programming.
While art galleries and organizations often position their identities as neutral containers, KAJE does the opposite. The particular character of each artist’s work is absorbed into the system, informing how KAJE looks from one exhibition to the next.
Website
The homepage of KAJE’s website is populated with a collection of images, symbols and clip art that represent an event or exhibition. Together, they form an irregular visual index that grows with each new program.
This archive can be viewed chronologically, where individual programs expand to include event details, tickets, and documentation.
KAJE’s website also hosts a shop, where visitors can buy editions, artworks, merch, and publications.
ThinkTank
KAJE’s research residency program, ThinkTank, shifts the website into a different mode, where the type is vertically stretched like the ThinkTank logo.
Applications
The bulk of KAJE’s identity is expressed on social media, where a new micro-identity is designed for each new program or exhibition, using the foundational typefaces, sizes and formatting of the underlying visual language.
Publications
Other Means has designed many printed programs and editions for KAJE, in collaboration with artists and organizations such as Matthew Schrader, Wilder Allison, Michel Auder, Montez Press Radio, Karishma D’Souza, James Ferraro, and Wesley Chavis.
KAJE 2024 Annual Benefit honoring Michel Auder
Celebration for Simple, Jasper Spicero
Ensemble, Matthew Schrader
Big Wrap, Forearm, Wesley Chavis
