york.systems

Abridged press portfolio

A good type of making.

Art director, thirty years in the trade, twenty at Better World Advertising, a San Francisco studio that takes only work that matters.

What follows runs from a Halifax letterpress room to campaigns for the CDC. The pages themselves are set by a typesetting engine I built. For interviews or print files: dyork@typeset.us.

— Dustin York

Contents

13 easy pieces

01
Ink · Halifax to San Francisco
Thirty Years in the Trade
Halifax to San Francisco, letterpress to compositor
Letterpress at the Dawson Printshop, rhetoric under Hanno Ehses, twelve-foot signage on the Halifax skyline, art directing the city's alt weekly, then twenty years of public-health campaigns in San Francisco, and building a compositor that taught the browser to read.
02
Ink · NSCAD, c. 2000
Under Ehses
How a rhetorical handbook rearranged a life
Hanno Ehses had studied under Otl Aicher. What reached me was not the handbook he made with Ellen Lupton but the paper he wrote alone: a theatre season put through the classical figures, Macbeth argued a dozen defensible ways. What he gave me at NSCAD was not a style. It was an engine.
03
Persuasion · 2006–present
Twenty Years at Better World
Applied rhetoric, in a studio that only takes work worth doing
Les Pappas built Better World Advertising to take only the work that mattered. Twenty years of HIV prevention, civic engagement, behavior change. The theory became practice. The practice became the life.
04
Persuasion · Federal, state, county
HIV Prevention
Federal, state, and county: testing, treatment, and PrEP
The studio archive holds eighty-seven HIV and STD prevention campaigns. Three stand for them here: a CDC national testing campaign, a franchise that has run for more than two decades, and PrEP outreach in Ohio.
05
Persuasion · San Francisco to Detroit
Foster Care & Adoption
Four campaigns, three cities, one argument
Four campaigns, one argument: older kids in the foster system need families, and the families are already out there. San Francisco, Alameda County, Detroit, and a national run for the Human Rights Campaign.
06
Persuasion · Santa Clara County
Work With Substance
Fentanyl, opioids, and teen marijuana: four campaigns for one county, ages twelve to thirty-nine
One county health system kept coming back: fentanyl harm reduction for users, primary prevention for teens. Four campaigns, ages twelve to thirty-nine, each in its own register.
07
Persuasion · New York and San Jose
Immigrant Communities
A New York municipal ID; a five-language campaign in San Jose
IDNYC put a free municipal ID within reach of every New Yorker; One County One Future told Santa Clara County's immigrants, in five languages, that the county stood with them. Both took Communicator Awards.
08
Persuasion · For INPUD
Drug War Peace
An argument to the United Nations, for INPUD
For the International Network of People Who Use Drugs: posters aimed at United Nations policy makers, for drug law built on evidence, human rights, and dignity. American Graphic Design Award, 2009.
09
Persuasion · For Valley Water
Climate Changed
Flood awareness in four languages, for Valley Water
Flood-risk awareness for Santa Clara County, in four languages. Communicator Gold, and NAFSMA first place for public flood awareness, 2019.
10
Persuasion · For First 5 Contra Costa
Sugar Bites
A juice box with teeth, for First 5 Contra Costa
A juice box with teeth. Sugary drinks and childhood obesity, argued to parents of under-fives in Contra Costa County. Communicator Gold for the campaign site, and a published evaluation.
11
Persuasion · For Healthy Chicago
Take Pride, Leave Cigarettes
Cessation with dignity, for Healthy Chicago
Smoking cessation for Chicago's LGBTQ women of color: pride and smoking don't go together. American Graphic Design Award, 2014.
12
Code · c. 2000–2026
Typeset.us
A thesis from the turn of the millennium, finished in 2026
Print solved line-breaking in 1981. The browser never did. A quarter-century gap between diagnosis and tool, closed in collaboration with a language model that knows the literature.
typeset.us →
13
Ink
Contact & Assets
Interviews, imagery, and the address
For interviews, print-resolution imagery, and everything not in these pages.