What do the hippie, punk and Mad Agriculture have in common? The Office of Ordinary Things explains

Mad Agriculture is a rhizomatic organisation, whose name and manifesto are inspired by Wendell Berry’s Mad Farmer poems, advocating for a radical transformation of society and agriculture. They help farmers transition to regenerative agriculture through their branches – Mad Capital, Mad Markets, and Mad Lands. The brand, designed by San Francisco-based design studio The Office of Ordinary Things, reflects their countercultural and hands-on attitude. ‘Mad Ag’ introduced their organisation’s vibe to the team as “hippie meets punk,” and while the two subcultures may not immediately seem interlinked, the team realised that their paths converge in politics. “They’re “mad” in both the “crazy” way and the “angry” way – movements dreaming of and fighting for a better world,” Designer Giorgia Sage tells us. “When we started digging deeper into countercultural history, we discovered a plethora of ephemera from the United Farm Workers movement and the American Agriculture Movement,” they add. Mad Agriculture – and everything it represents – descends from these lineages, so they formed the foundation of the brand and its visual language, from the image treatments and outspoken graphic forms, to the use of repetition, layering, and rotation to create dynamic and energetic results. And, no doubt, the visual elements of agriculture played a part, too.