alexandros skouras

HOW POSTERS WORK
ARTS 305 – INTRODUCTION TO SOFTWARE I
SPRING 2021
BINGHAMTON UNIVERSITY (SUNY)
HARPUR COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

Project description:

In an attempt to explore in more depth, some of the functions, tools, and processes of design software you will re-create/re-imagine* three (3) – or more – posters from Cooper Hewitt’s, Smithsonian Design Museum permanent collection.

All of the original examples of posters shared with you in the presentation files, are from Cooper Hewitt’s permanent collection.

The posters you choose to work with, have to fall under different categories,** and they also need to share different visual characteristics.*** So for example, you can choose to work with a poster from the cut and paste category that focuses on collage, a poster from the simplify category that focuses on illustration, and a poster from the amplify category that focuses on typography.

This project is not intended as a recipe on how to create the best poster. It is a project intended to teach you about how designers see. The works you are asked to re-create/re-imagine have mobilized principles of composition, perception, and rhetoric. Each poster enacts ways of thinking and making, and each poster wants to be seen. How do we look at graphic design, and how, in turn, does graphic design looks back at us?

During the following weeks you will learn how to observe, analyze, and deconstruct works of others, and create your own interpretations of them. You will also learn how to utilize analog, and digital tools and processes in order to do so. You will be working on Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe Photoshop.

*
Your work does not (!) have to be an exact reproduction of the original poster (...we could use a scanner to do that...), but rather pay tribute to the ways of thinking and making behind the process of creating such a poster.

**
Focus the Eye
Overwhelm the Eye
Simplify
Cut and Paste
Overlap
Assault the Surface
Activate the Diagonal
Manipulate Scale
Use Text as Image
Tell a Story
Double the Meaning
Amplify
Make Eye Contact
Make a System

***
Typographic
Illustration
Photo montage
Type + image
Photographic
Handmade
Scanned
Collage
etc...