Type as Image
Type as Image
Overview
This is a separate project that follows Design Sings! Design Sings! translated your song into typographic form. The poster moves into public communication: using typography to announce, persuade, and get someone to stop, read, and act.
Runs Nov 6 through Dec 11.
Poster Project
Learning outcomes:
- Make meaning through typography, using speculative or real content and a clear call to action
- Build and break grids, and guide the eye with typographic hierarchy and composition
- Design at 24 x 36 in. scale, and see how hierarchy and legibility change at poster size
- Work iteratively, from analog sketches to digital refinement, through moodboards, reference, tiling, and pre-press
The assignment. Design a 24 x 36 in. typographic poster. Choose one of two directions.
Option A, show poster. Design a poster announcing a live show by the artist from your Design Sings song. You can carry the typographic voice, patterns, and cover from Design Sings! into a new context: announcing a performance. Your poster must include the artist, the venue and address, the date and time, ticket or RSVP info, and any supporting acts you want to invent.
Option B, speculative content. Design a poster for something that doesn't exist yet, based on the "Stuff We're Not Talking About That We Should Be Talking About" exercise in class. Speculative content can be fiction or non-fiction, and it can use parody or humor to make a critical point. It can take the form of a self-help offering, school club flyer, public service announcement, lost pet poster, event, exhibition, workshop, protest, or product launch. Your poster must include a title or message, date, time, and place, a description, and a call to action.
Examples of speculative content:
- Form: self-help seminar. Content: "Get a Lobotomy — Feel Nothing Again." Critical thought: are the pressures of modern life so overwhelming that people would rather feel nothing?
- Form: campus club flyer. Content: "Don't Work Too Hard, You'll Get Sad (Mediocre is OK!)" Critical thought: are students so burnt out they need permission to do less?
- Form: lost pet flyer. Content: "I miss my dog." Critical thought: loneliness, loss, and vulnerability in public space.
For either option, include a call to action (URL, phone, email, or Instagram handle) and a design credit in small type: DESIGN: YOUR NAME, 10pt all caps.
What makes a good poster? A poster competes for attention with every other poster on the wall, every sign on the street, and every screen in your pocket. Some questions to guide you:
Hierarchy. What's the first thing someone sees? The second? The third? Can someone get the basic message in 3 seconds from 10 feet away?
Typography as communication. Does your typeface choice support the content? Does the scale create urgency or calm? Are the date, time, and place readable?
Composition. Are you using a grid or breaking it? Is there tension between elements? Is there room for the eye to rest?
Call to action. Is it clear what someone should do after seeing this poster, and is that information easy to find?
Craft. Are your edges clean? Did you proofread? Does it work at full size, or only small on your screen?
Technical specs. Final trim size is 24 x 36 in., portrait or landscape. Your document size is 24.25 x 36.25 in., which adds 0.125 in. bleed on all sides. Keep important text 0.25 in. inside the trim edge. To propose an alternative format, like a series of smaller posters, let me know by Nov 13.
Nov 6: content, research, and moodboards. In class, we'll do the "Stuff We're Not Talking About" exercise and define your content. Homework due Nov 13:
- A content proposal: the form of your poster, the content, the critical thought or the show details, and your poster elements (title, date, time, place, description, call to action)
- At least 5 reference posters from reputable sources (.edu or .org), each with a short reflection: what do you like, how does it work, and how might that approach fit your content?
- A moodboard (PDF) with reference material related to your content, visual references for mood, color palettes, and forms or processes from earlier projects you want to push further
- Sketches from your notebook (photos are fine)
Upload everything to Google Drive.
Nov 13: references, grids, digital sketches. In class, we'll review your content and moodboards in small groups, look at an incomplete history of posters and contemporary practitioners, look at poster books from the SMFA Library, and do InDesign tutorials on grids, margins, working iteratively, placing images, and unconventional grids. Homework due Nov 20:
- 10+ sketches in InDesign or Illustrator, all at actual size. Work iteratively: make one, duplicate the page, make another. Your sketches should be visibly and conceptually different.
- At least 3 sketches informed by Visual Grammar by Christian Leborg. Look at "Activities" (page 40+) and "Relations" (page 54+), and try repetition, mirroring, rotation, scaling, superimposition, and layering.
- At least 1 sketch informed by a reference from a book in the SMFA Library
- Research your topic: find at least 3 articles from reputable sources, pull out keywords and lines of text, and cite your sources
Nov 20: top 3 sketches and tiling. Bring your top 3 sketches printed. In class, we'll have an all-class crit, refine content, troubleshoot technical questions, learn how to tile your poster for full-size printing, and have one-on-one meetings. Homework due Dec 4: print your poster tiled at full size on 8.5 x 11 or 11 x 17 in. sheets, then trim and tape them together.
To tile from InDesign: File > Print > Setup > Tile: Full Pages, with 0.125 in. overlap. To tile from Illustrator: File > Print > General > Scaling: Tile Full Pages, with 0.125 in. overlap.
Print it a few days early. Not the night before, and not the day of.
Nov 27: no class, Thanksgiving.
Dec 4: silent crit and send to printer. Due before 9:30am: your full-size tiled poster, ready to pin up, plus a PDF and JPG uploaded to Google Drive. In class, we'll have a silent crit with written feedback and a demo on preparing your file for professional printing. Send your poster to the SMFA Inkjet Printing Service (room B031) by the end of the day. The printing service is output-only, so they will print your file as-is with no edits except resizing. Make any changes before you submit.
Dec 11: final crit and celebration, last class. Bring your final poster printed at 24 x 36 in., trimmed with clean edges, and hung with poster tabs. Please don't put pins through your poster. Posters will be photographed for the Graphic Arts Area Instagram.
References:
- Video: "How Posters Work," youtube.com/watch?v=3nffF8xHe6A
- Archives: Typographic Posters (typographicposters.com), Letterform Archive (oa.letterformarchive.org), Cooper Hewitt's "How Posters Work" exhibition, Palestinian Poster Project (palestineposterproject.org), Poster House (posterhouse.org)
- Practitioners: Sming Sming Press, Hansje van Halem, Zuzana Licko, Martin Venezky
- Reading: Ellen Lupton's top ten favorite typographic posters (typeroom.eu), and "AI Can't Give You Good Taste" by Elizabeth Goodspeed