Symposium Posters

In REVERSE chronological order, these are the posters that were put out for various Symposium events and notifications this past year. Except for the "ATTENTION FUNDS" poster (which follows the site design, or vice versa, homepages.dordt.edu/symposium), they seem to have a protest/revolt theme... that I thought was hilarious and well executed and, frankly, I can't think of better images to match the enthusiasm we were looking for and, at the same time, (I think) poked fun at misconceptions of how a student body government is supposed to operate. (Forum, as I've been told, was a waste of time and countless students, faculty and administrative members have commented on our effectiveness in serving the student body.) There has been some questions/slight disapproval with the content on these posters, so that's up for discussion as well.

Few notes of mine:
-My ONLY criticism for the first poster, VOTE, is that the dissolving, diminishing lower half of the soldier makes it a little difficult to read the candidates. Also, it goes against the stark contours of the rest of the images. Otherwise, it's probably my favorite piece of the collection.
-The second poster is my least favorite, but seemed to receive the most aggressive response.
-Love that the vortex behind the fist is a little off center, and that "vote" and "run" in said vortex are inverted colors.
-The corners of the Che Guevara stamp are a little distracting to me - might want to see it softened out or blown up and at an angle, but that would compromise the triptych.
-The people on the bottom of the boot are hilarious, and it really helps the copy.

All posters by Paul Hanaoka for Student Symposium (08-09)
...and Paul, you can list your blogs and site up here.

Changeling Film Poster

OK. So this wasn't designed by anybody at Dordt. I didn't even see this film at Dordt, but thought the poster was interesting to note. If you have Angelina Jolie in a film, you have to put her face on the poster. I read in an article that Will Smith's face MUST be the only thing on a poster for a film he's in because, apparently, he's the world's last movie star. In this poster, however, there's just a few really irritating decisions with the copy that they made, notably the placement of the top credits and the right align of the film production notes. They put a shadow on the kid, which is an interesting decision, but difficult to do against a stark white background... especially when they have some fill light on his right side as well.

up for criticism

I have started a new "project" - make something cool every day - so that I can practice new techniques in photoshop/illustrator/etc and will be posting something new every day for ...however long. so yeah feel free to offer up suggestions, criticisms, etc...hit me with your best shot. I will most likely take it personally and retort with 'oh yeah you suck too' or something of equal wit...but seriously -

Video

I just ranted about this on my personal blog, and thought it would be of note here. The Animation class had a screening of their work a few weeks ago, before the semester ended, to showcase some final pieces. It involved a dozen or so students and promotional video spots (for Ag day, or a Blink 182 show etc.) and a typography demonstration. I had hoped there would have been a more vocal critique discussion for the event, but Dordt art majors kept it in polite silence for the most part - maybe they had seen them all before and had already discussed? I don't know. A lot of the spots could have gone to a local television station (it's to my understanding that some of them have) but several others, still, felt like web spots or the intro. to a site that you click to enter the actual site. Some were brief and simple and cute and others drew more of a narrative sense from the viewer. What I mean to say is that there was a good variety... but a lot of them, not all of them, ended their fifteen, thirty, sixty second spot when their animation was over and simply cut the audio out. When this happens on television, it reeks of choppy local Northwest Iowa broadcasting. It's more of a recurring annoyance with online ads because those don't run very smoothly from one video to the other (yet), but that doesn't excuse the animator, editor, producers for letting it happen. If you're putting a video segment together, you're guiding the viewer's eyes to see various motions and objects in a specific sequence - the other HALF of that experience is the audio. You'd be an obvious amateur if you threw as many rotations or morphs in your video as possible with no reason for its existence, or regard for its timing. The same goes for the audio - if you loop it carelessly or cut it out at a strange point, it's startling to the viewer and, instead of remembering the time and place for Ag day, they're stuck saying "Wait. What just happened to the music?" People stop dancing and they look around as if they just woke up.
There's my rant.

"You're about to be taken to a dream world of magic!"

Poster by Naomi DeBoer

This is an image I first saw and had to double-take on my way out of the classroom building. In terms of posters advertising events on campus (and God Almighty knows there are horrible ones out there), this is one that doesn't scream at you to look at it. It doesn't use huge block lettering, or a bad joke, to get your attention - it's a fairy-tale image and it's in my opinion that Naomi does best at this style.
And she managed to fit a lot of information on the bottom wipe.
I wonder about the red coloring on the bottom though - it kind of freaks me out.
The tree and canvas background are hand painted in acrylic on canvas. The swoops and copy were added afterward in Illustrator and Photoshop... right? Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Naomi DeBoer is currently a junior majoring in both Fine Arts and Graphic Design. She's done other work for the Theatre Arts dept. - the poster for Dead Man Walking and the playbill for Urinetown immediately come to mind.


(The images on blogspot really don't show very well - should we move this to photoblog instead?)