The road signs, along with the banners and posters were designed by Brandon Berkel, in collaboration with Molly Perrault. They developed the creative and informative COVID-19 Public Safety Announcement artwork seen around the Town of Telluride as part of Telluride Arts push to educate our local population and our visitors. Telluride Arts was involved in a covid-response team that included the Town of Telluride, San Miguel County, the County Health Director, and other local partners to develop strategies to keep our community safe and business open. Once they understood the key messaging that needed to get out, Telluride Arts led the charge to include artists in the safety campaign.
In mid-March of 2020, when the ski mountain closed, and then the Free Box - a series of wooden bins and shelves that are located on a sidewalk just off of our main street, and an iconic part of our local heritage where people exchange goods - was shuttered, Branden Berkel and several friends realized how bad things were. “When the Free Box closed, everyone was really bummed,” Berkel said. “That felt like the first sign things were getting really serious.”
And so, the first unofficial public service announcement, “This town ain’t big enough for the two of us,” was born during their midnight guerilla art project to beautify the plywood that boarded up the Free Box.
Telluride Arts loved the Free box aesthetic and reached out to Berkel to build on this work for the full COVID campaign on behalf of the Town of Telluride. Molly Perrault, Telluride Arts' programs director at the time and a skilled artist herself, worked with Berkel to develop the specific designs featured in the campaign. In total there was a banner across Colorado Avenue, eight large signs on the Spur road coming into town, the outdoor dining and website collateral, and hundreds of posters that were plastered across town and became collector's items.
