The Mind of Design: event

Here is a picture I took of one of my classmate's poster designs for the Annual Juried Student Art Exhibition. This design was my favorite among all the posters. This poster is very bold, and straight to the point. The unified illustration is very intricate, and it definitely makes this piece stand out amongst its surroundings. I believe this design sends the message that art students at SUNY Oneonta have strong imaginations and great ideas which lead to great art. I can also see the frustration every college student experiences with the multitude of work, and issues on our mind through the hands grasping the face. This design is definitely unique. It combines pretty elements with quirky ones in a way that isn't cliche. I personally favor this design because I love the transcendence from a person's upper body to different nature elements and alien-like details. It sends me the message that we are more than just what we are, and we can be anything we want as long as we can think of it.

Thanks for reading,

Brittany Rendon

www.behance.net/brittanyjade

SUNY Oneonta's Art department holds an Annual Juried Student Art Show every Spring and my graphic design class was asked to design a poster for the event. Each student's task is to design 3 variations of a poster, each with a different element being emphasized. The best poster will be chosen for the event to be used around campus and downtown to promote the show.

Before I began designing, I created a Mind Map with "Student Art Show" as the main focal point and I drew branches from there with anything that I mentally related with the SUNY Oneonta Art Show. The point of this was to be free of any judgement and let my ideas just flow onto the paper. It didn't go as smoothly as I had hoped, because a lot of the words I thought of were pretty cliche, but it definitely did help. I find that my biggest challenge when designing anything is choosing where to start. The Mind Map definitely did make it a little more simple for me to visually see my ideas, but I ended up trying about four completely different designs anyway, haha.

The first design I did was a very basic typography flyer with a simple color palette and not much visual interest. I quickly abandoned this idea and moved onto the next, which was a bit more quirky. I took an image of a fancy framed chalkboard from Google and used a simple typeface to add an unexpected contrast against the fancy frame. I loved this idea, but I am not sure if it is the perfect idea for this project. I reached a halt, trying to figure out how to make it look more interesting. My third idea was to create three different types of eyeglass frames to demonstrate the differences between every student. I want to add another meaningful element to this one but I also reached a halt. My last design is my favorite (most likely the one I am going to use). It combines a real photograph of a bird, with lines I have drawn in Illustrator around the bird to outline its shape and they all meet at the bottom left where I will have the text about the show. I love the contrast between realism and artificial design in this poster, it makes for a very intriguing concept.