ART 393 – Poster Design
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Poster design was my introduction to silkscreen printing as an art method. The way in which it makes design feel so much more handmade and unique really appealed to me. I truly enjoyed getting to learn all the tips and tricks to making cool prints. This class culminated in a group exhibition at WKCTC’s Paducah School of Art and Design. Our first project was simply just to learn how to print, and keep our layers lined up using a ghost image and a final pass of a thick outline. I came up with a simple illustration of my jumbo hedgehog plush named Rick. This print was on 9×12.5 in paper.
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Our next print upped the size to 12.5×19 in, while keeping the same technique for lining up (registering) the layers. I had been thinking about and was fascinated by Enric Jardí’s poster promoting awareness about domestic violence visually through what looks to be a model kit and wanted to try and use that idea for body parts, promoting the idea to keep ones body healthy since our individual organs and parts are not simply mass produced. I was very happy how to illustration turned out and the print came out beautifully, once of the best the whole semester.
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The next poster kept the same size initially but used a new registration method called registration marks, which I ended up trimming off, reducing the size to about 10×15.5 in. We were also tasked with using Photoshop to create halftones in an effort to create more value shifts while still retaining a limited color palette. I was really interested in designing something based off of the Mitski concert I had recently gone to. They were selling posters there, but I didn’t find them interesting enough to buy, so I decided to create my own. What I did know was interesting was some of the art direction for her latest album, so infusing some of its color palette and one of the super unique fonts it used with my own style of typography, I set out to create something that could fit within the canon of her latest album’s promotional material, but still very uniquely my own.
Our next project increased the size again to double that of the previous one, up to 19×25 in. For this one, I created a diptych with two posters for the same prompt. Throughout undergrad, I have been researching the field of Speculative Design, in line with the likes of Dunne & Raby and Extrapolation Factory, and recently came upon the “muse” of neuromodulation. I won’t get into full details, but essentially, neuromodulation is a technology that acts directly upon nerves, and it can do many things, such as help reduce tremors in people diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, reduce migraine effects, lower anxiety, and so much more that we’re not even fully sure of yet. This poster series posits a future speculative political debate where “Act 6.Ce” has been proposed by the US government to allow incarcerated individuals to consent to neuromodulation as a way to reduce their prison sentences. This would be by using neuromodulation devices to get rid of their “abnormalities” (anger issues, etc.) via targeting their brains. One poster says you should vote yes on this law; the other says you should vote no. Each of them attempts to distinguish themselves on either side of the debate through messaging and visual style.
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Our last project kept the same dimension, 19×25 in, and asked us to use only two colors (the previous project asked for four colors, but I split them up between both posters). For no real reason whatsoever, I had been hung up on making a water polo poster since the start of the semester. After doing some research, I found a way to make it much more personal by talking about one of the most famous water polo matches in history between Hungary and the USSR during the 1956 Olympics. Studying abroad the semester before, I had visited Budapest, Hungary, and got to tour a monument to the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and the USSR secret police’s headquarters. After seeing the bloody history and horrors up close, I wanted to pay homage to a true victory for the Hungarian people during this time of oppression and hardship under the USSR when they were able to come out on top.
