It’s time to get crackin’. Here’s my assignment for Tuesday:

For next week, I’d like you to concentrate on describing the problem you’d like to solve, as well as researching posters/poster designers/other influences for your project. This will be ongoing, but I’d like you to get a solid jump on it. We’ll look at your research, and talk through your approach.

Some questions to think about are subject matter, relationship of the posters to one another, and how the process (screenprinting) will inform the work.

I’d like to create posters that are informative, that relate conceptually to the event they are promoting and that would grab the attention of a passerby. I have one project lined up with the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition doing a poster as well as other printed promotional items for Momentum Tulsa (the website hasn’t been updated since ’06) in June. I will be printing a large edition of posters (a couple hundred?) to sell at the event, as well as sending them a digital version of the design to be printed and distributed around town. All of the promo items should be cohesive in design; retaining the red/black/white color scheme and the train theme (I do not have to use the same train). I would also like to create a poster for my second solo show at Artifacts, which is happening in July. (Is it fair for me to be doing a poster for myself?) I would also like to print this in a large edition to be sold at the opening and closing and then later on etsy. I’d like to do three other posters for bands, but I haven’t worked anything out with a specific venue or a band yet. Though I guess I could do show posters that aren’t for a particular show? Something that would be for my portfolio.

The posters don’t have much to do with each other since they’re for different types of events (with the exception of the band/show posters), but I’d like for them to be in “my style.” I don’t want to get so caught up in what “my style” is that they all look the same, but I’d like to further develop the handmade, handwritten, textural look that I was working with on my Voltage paper sample (at the end of the entry) and use it as necessary / if necessary. Obviously, it’s not all about appearances. A lot of research will have to go into each poster. They’ll just relate visually in the way you can tell a Little Friends poster from a Small Stakes poster.

There are a number of technical aspects that I will have to work with by using screenprinting as my medium. I’ll have to think about my image in layers as I am creating it. Screenprinting ink looks and behaves differently than something that is offset printed or digitally printed, so I will also have to consider (physically) how the colors will interact with each other. Also, if I choose to use photographs, they’ll have to be halftoned (or posterized) and possibly separated into process colors. I’ve worked with screenprinting for a few years now and while I’m hardly an expert, I feel comfortable with the process and feel that I can use it to my advantage.

I’ve got a ton of research on poster artists, but it’s going to take a little while for me to gather up all of the information and post it, so that’ll be coming soon.