The 8th Annual AIGA Toledo/BGSUGD Portfolio Review Day is an event that brings together student and professional graphic designers. Students from the area are invited to show their portfolios, hear from a guest speaker and attend break out sessions. Every year, the BGSU graphic design seniors are required to attend a portfolio review day along with a number of other invitees. Each year one student is chosen to do an independent study to create all of the collateral for the event, and I was chosen to design the portfolio review day of 2015.

Our guest speaker for the day was Kelli Anderson.  She describes herself as a tinkerer, working with paper and materials in exciting ways and she is constantly challenging expectations.

The title Raw is a reflection on the unavoidable honesty of an interview. For artists, presenting your work is always revealing and intimidating on some level. The goal for the event’s visual aesthetic was to create something intricate and beautiful from its most basic form. The idea to screen-print most of the promotional materials was rooted in the concept of embracing the imperfections of the human hand and allowing the physical design piece itself to become raw. This was my first time screen-printing and I knew there would be mistakes. I chose to reveal the process of making the posters by using every ”bad” poster to create postcards, notebooks, and sign-up sheets.

Everything was screen-printed and the many imperfections were embraced making the promotional materials themselves “beautifully raw”.