Due Next Monday: Logo & Envy Ad -- plus, get started on the Poster Presentation

For next class -- Monday -- be prepared to print out both your finished logo page, and your "envy" ad. Bring $4 to class to pay for the prints (it costs $2 per sheet). We'll look at them and critique them in Monday's class.

Also -- this assignment won't be due until a week from today, but you should get a head start on it -- don't wait until tuesday and scramble to put it together at the last minute. As a prelude to our poster project, everyone is going to do an in-class presentation on a poster artist or a poster movement. Feel free to present images in powerpoint, or as an image slideshow. Everyone will have 10 minutes to present and take questions. In addition to the presentation, you'll need to email me a minimum three page paper (double-spaced), which will serve as an outline of your presentation. That's three written pages -- not one written page and two pages of pasted-in images. If you want to include images as supplements to the three page paper, feel free. Include a fourth page that lays out your bibliography (I want you to use at least four separate sources). If you can get your hands on some actual books to bring to class to show around, please do. There are a few poster art books in Prim Library

In your presentation and paper, give a description of the artist/movement, and what the social context for the work was. Who was the audience for the posters? What sorts of messages were they trying to convey? Who paid for the posters to be made (if relevant -- some posters, like the May '68 posters, were not commissioned)? What made the posters interesting or unique? What made them stand out? In addition to giving some biographical and social context, pick out several images that interest you, and critique them in some detail. What sorts of formal decisions make the posters "work" (or fail to work, if you think they're bad posters?) Talk about the use of images, the use of composition, the use of color. Talk about how text and fonts are used in the posters.

Here are the poster artist assignments, assigned to each student:

Théophile Steinlen -- Victoria
Alphonse Mucha (and Art Nouveau) -- Heather
May 1968 Posters (look up 1968 Paris Uprising, 1968 Street Posters) -- Logan
Polish movie posters (esp. Jan Lenica) -- Nick
Soviet Movie Posters (esp. The Stenberg Brothers) -- Thomas
Rene Mederos (and Cuban poster artists of the 1960s) -- Drew
Gary Grimshaw (psychedelic 60s posters) -- Jenn
Victor Moscoco (psychedelic) -- Chelsea
Rupert Garcia (chicano movement posters) -- Sam
The Beautiful Angle Poster Project -- Cody
Shigeo Fukuda -- Matt

The above image is by Bay Area Chicana artist Ester Hernandez