Last year the second year guest speaker series had some real nice posters advertising each event, Designed by Stephen Barratt. Unfortunately these wern't happening this year so we decided we they should come from us. So we designed a couple posters to promote the lectures.
The first was Jonathan Barnbrook.
We had decided that the poster series would feature imagery or tye which was our reaction to the designer or their work, giving an overall aesthetic which should reflect them but not just feature their work or what they're famous for. More we wanted to visually hint or sum them up. For the Barnbrook one we wanted to get his very rebellious, anti establishment nature, very gothic almost religious approach to typography across in the poster. Inside the album art for David Bowie's 'Heathen' album which Barnbrook designed, was featured an image of a vandalized 17th century painting in 1985. We felt this kinda visual language would work pretty well and like the scope for vandalized religious iconography which we thought would chime very well with the Barnbrook's imagery.
Next I searched through florence renaissance art books for some suitable religious imagery. Finding some pictures depicting saints and angels I made photocopies and then created an etching plate in the print room. This was inked up and put through the press. The resulting prints I proceeded to splash corrosive acid and make cutting marks with a blade. this was to simulate the vandalism which took place upon the rembrandt in 1985. Below is one of the copies before it was vandalised:
So we now had the artwork for the poster with the date time and name underneath. But we wanted to do something by way of branding which we could then roll out across all the poster series. something which gave all of the information which wouldn't change each week (so "the University of East London guest lecturer series") . We decided that if a screen was made up with this branding in the shape and style of a stamp this could be printed over the top of the plain B/W print (we have no money..) in colour. Thus injecting colour and making the the poster more interesting than a 1 tone digital print. They would be printed in a random nature across the poster, each week would have a different colour and the stamp would be printed across corresponding to which number lecture it was. The barnbrook was the third so it has three. (this version doesn't because its just the digital copy, I will update...)
The next lecture was given by Tom Klinkowstein. We remembered him from last year having also done a days workshop with him on top of the lecture. The thing that most stuck in mind about him was his way with words and fantastical statements. We were going to make a typographic poster. We trawled through his twitter feed and narrowed down relevant quotes to a few before deciding upon 'I am interested in the everyday - but the everyday of a distant future time.'
This would be split between two posters by the natural break. That way you would read one poster which cut off mid sentence, walk down the hall and be confronted with the other fragment of text, emphasizing the point.
We liked it. And he liked it. Enough to re post it over the internet and having it re printed and applied at another university in the states. so that was a success. When he visited he stopped in to thank Joe and I and interestingly didn't remember actually saying the phrase.