Design, theory, & criticism project. Poster design, postmodern influence, visual strategy, overlap and movement with type and image.
Challenge: After learning about writer Rick Poyner’s concept of the five different visual strategies in design, the task was to pick one of these strategies, as well as a work from a postmodern designer, and use them to design a poster conveying the cultural climate of the Italian Avant-Garde. The poster was intended to act as an advertisemnet for a pre existing art exhibit containing works made within the Italian Avant-Garde time period.
Solution: Designed a poster that combines the strategy of deconstruction and Maria Lai’s work and processes. Geografia, the piece crafted by Lai, was made out of basic materials such as thread, canvas, wood and fabric. Designers during the 1960s-1980s gathered raw, recycled materials like these and pieced them back together to create something new. This alludes to the strategy of deconstruction, which is practiced in this poster with typography and image.
Deconstructing the title of the poster and placing a few letters behind the background image devised the overlapping of different layers. The paragraph of body text surrounded by the larger scale letters distributed across the entire poster, creates movement that makes the audience work to understand what they’re looking at. This is the essence of deconstruction, and the importance of movement which Lai deeply focused on during her creative process of sewing words onto canvas.
