African Mask Educational App Concept

As a collector of tribal art and masks in particular, I was surprised by the lack of decent resources for collectors and serious enthusiasts, aside from coffee table art books, dry anthropological tomes, and a handful of wonderful vintage field guides. It is my intention here to create a modern field guide that will raise cultural awareness of African culture, one that avoids clichés and condescending treatment of the subject matter (Using the typefaces Neuland, Papyrus, or anything 'primitive' for instance). The Masks tablet app presents tribal art objects with the same sophistication typically reserved for western art.

The Typographic palette features Neutraface and Eames Century Modern, and while both typefaces are named for American visionaries in architecture and industrial design, I intended to draw a cross-cultural association based on aesthetic (but not superficial) similarities. I find its symmetry to be evokative of the masks themselves. Its low-waisted form is uncanny, much like the irregular geometries of African art and Cubism. Eames Century Modern embodies a ruggedness that is a natural fit for indigenous art. Through a loose string of influences, I assert that these typefaces, both exercises in classic Modernism, follow a lineage from Abstract Art to the African tribal objects that inspired it.

While it would be more standard and much easier to use photos, I opted to create original illustrations for each mask type, in the same vein as the old nature guides I read as a child. That, and I love to draw. The Buffalo mask on the left is drawn directly from a piece in my personal collection, and the Kifwebe on the right is based on a composite of museum specimens, taking the most essential features into account.