Reparations Club is a concept bookstore and creative space in Los Angeles, California. Created and managed by Jazzi McGilbert, Rep Club is a project dedicated exclusively to the promotion of BIPOC (black, indigenous and "colored" people) literature and cultural production (black, indigenous and "colored" people, as non-white people are called in English) .
The project has its curatorship focused on productions by people with this racial background, in addition to shedding light on themes related to social and racial issues, with the purpose of promoting the circulation of goods and money between the hands of these people through the sale and promotion of their products.
The name of the place reinforces the "reparation" aspect, that is the idea that there should be a kind of compensation to black people who for centuries were enslaved and deprived of any social and economic progression. In the American context, in 1865 black families who had been enslaved in the United States were promised "40 acres and a mule", a promise that was never fulfilled.
Racial issues around the world have similar roots, but their practical implications vary according to region-specific contexts and social habis. Our challenge was to understand how racial segregation occurs historically in the United States and how to create a current visual identity that had this historical scenario as a starting point.
With the intention of creating an identity that reinforces the historical and social values of the project and that helps in the reverberation of the voices that it represents, we focused the expression of the brand in its typography. Two contrasting typographic families were chosen with historical inspiration in publications and graphic materials related to the black culture and its social movements. The square, in addition to representing a cutout or a window that points to a world view, can also be interpreted as the demarcation of the space that should be destined – as historical reparation – to the BIPOC population. The colors guide the urgency of the project, and symbolize the balance between a vibrant culture and the seriousness of its struggles that are driven by the bookstore.
