Heartland
Cataloguing the heart of America
What happens when you ditch the coastal pretense and work your way across the country, one small town at a time?
What we did
Industries
Mother US has two locations: Brooklyn, NY and Los Angeles, CA. This positions the company in the center of the creative industry, but at the very outskirts of the country.
The result is a cultural chasm between Mother employees and the populations of small-town America, which can lead to a weakened understanding of other people’s realities and work that may misrepresent their lives.
So we embarked on a journey across the nation to learn directly from the source. Over fourteen weeks, we listened, conversed, line-danced, and went mudding with Heartland America to see what coastal creative types are missing. Our findings are compiled in HEARTLAND, an archive of all we saw, heard, and experienced.
33
States
26
Interviews with Heartlanders
3
On-the-ground events
Despite misconceptions and stereotypes, the Heartland is a place of community, creativity, and beauty. Our goal in designing this publication was to reflect the landscape and culture honestly, without imposing a coastal bias of what a designed book should be. We leaned into the inherent beauty and visual history of the Heartland to create a work that is captivating on its own terms.
Part travelogue, part diary of the small American towns between the coasts—and those who live in them.
In order to present our research authentically, we set out to design an artifact that felt more native to the Heartland, and less like an outside perspective about it. We eschewed the traditional hardback, thick-papered, coffee-table format, and referenced instead the utilitarian design language of product manuals and field guides. We designed the publication—with a chipboard cover, coil binding, and room for writing—to feel like a volume of collected artifacts from a roadtrip across the country.
The section titled ‘Community’ speaks to the value Heartlanders place on close-knit communities. To reflect this sentiment, our design both references bulletin-board flyers (brightly colored paper, black ink) and includes authentic flyers from the Heartland, interspersed throughout the section.
Each book includes a foldout map of the Heartland, complete with illustrated vignettes found throughout the book. To bring these vignettes to life, we enlisted the help of illustrator and Heartland native, Paul Windle.
Credits
Research: Nonfiction
Illustration: Paul Windle
Case Study Photography: Matthew Gordon
Eyebeam
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