Ever wondered how much bacteria you encounter everyday? Well, Art Director and Designer Craig Ward will give you an idea. His latest project, "Subvisual Subway" is as much a series of portraits of the city’s inhabitants as it is a piece of information design. Now, let's take a closer look of these little "inhabitants".

I think the images serve as an excellent visual analogy for the colorful diversity of the city at large. While initially quite jarring I think there’s actually an inherent beauty in there too. I undertook the project over the summer of 2015 by riding all 22 of the city’s subway trains, collecting bacterial samples from handrails and seats and cultivating them into the letter or number of the train from which they were taken.
-Craig Ward

Back in April I saw a photograph taken by a researcher of the bacteria from her son’s handprint grown in agar and it reminded me of the urban myth that when you use the railings, you’re effectively shaking hands with a hundred people at once, and it kind of grew from there.
-Craig Ward

I try to not have a style, rather my style is in my approach which is largely process driven. I like to set a process in motion and allow it to dictate the look of a piece. In terms of my inspirations, I follow the photography and science worlds more closely than the design world, but as a student in the early 2000’s I was drawn to the ’symbolize and simplify’ maxim of 60’s designers like Saul Bass and Paul Rand. Carson and Sagmesiter were also an influence with their irreverent treatment of type.
-Craig Ward

I think the attention this project has received is testament to the notion that you should stay true to yourself. You’re the only thing that makes your work unique - your ideas and inspirations are what define you and set you apart from others.
-Craig Ward

It was very low fi really. The petri dishes were purchased from Amazon, along with some polystyrene thermal boxes for incubation and a standard heat lamp that you might find in a shed. To photograph the pieces I just used whatever I had lying around - the project took over 3 months and I was working on other things in parallel to this - so sometimes it was a Nikon D800 and sometimes a Canon T3i with appropriate macro lenses. Lighting was provided by a simple strip light with colored gels to tie the photos to the color of the lines they were taken from.
-Craig Ward

About Craig Ward

Craig Ward is a British designer based in New York since 2009, best known for his experimental typographic work. His day-to-day clients include Calvin Klein, Macy’s, Dior, The New York Times, Aesop and a variety of other clients across the advertising, publishing, fashion and music fields. He also pursue his own work which has been shown in New York, London, Paris, Chicago, Los Angeles and the far east and in 2012 he published his first self-authored and designed book, Popular Lies About Graphic Design, which went on to become a best-seller. See more of his amazing works on Behance or his website.