Strong Place Design Project was established as an exercise in graphic design. The concept was to create imagined designs based on the places we love as we remember them. 

When thinking about creating designs based on ‘memory and place’… I went back to where I was born and the places we hopped around to while I was growing up. Each has an indelible feeling associated with it. So why Strong Place? First off, it’s a great play on words… But more importantly it exemplifies the hyper-local concept I was after.

I was born in Jackson Heights and we moved from Brooklyn to Queens not long after I was born. At that time my dad was a pastor at Strong Place Baptist Church, which was an anchor in the diverse, melting-pot community. The church is still the anchor of the block, but now as a complex of interesting apartments. 

Subsequently we moved around a lot but the phrase “Strong Place” is one I often heard without any direct reference or specific understanding of, however it still managed to evoke a feeling of New York and those early snippets of memory.
 

- J.M.R