Remember how I posted about the work of Ed Ruscha oh so long ago?
Nearly three months later, I can finally reveal that Ruscha was my inspiration for a poster project in Typographic Design earlier this semester. The time-intensive project involved taking a quote or song lyrics and designing a type-driven, 22 x 35-inch poster. I chose one of author Jack Kerouac’s passages from his book, On the Road, that I happen to love for its message and vivid imagery, “Burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.”
Once I started sketching possible designs for the poster, I found these amazing microscopic pictures of cells. If you’ve ever read the book, you’ll know the novel centers heavily on two young men who travel across the U.S. in search of self-knowledge and real meaningful life experiences. I loved the explosive nature of the cell photographs and thought that, as the building blocks of the body (“the self”), they were the perfect symbolic representation of this personal quest for happiness.
Deep stuff, I know.
Using bright, analogous shades of orange, yellow + brown and a solid, sans serif font, OSP-DIN by OSP Foundry, the poster came together nearly exactly as I had imagined it from my initial sketches. And now, it’s proudly hanging in my apartment in all its gigantic 22 x 35-inch glory.
class Typographic Design
what Song Lyric / Quote Poster
01 Choose one serif and one sans serif font to hand render with your lyric or quote of choice.
02 Analyze both fonts and choose which style works best for your poster design.
03 Use any Adobe Creative suite software you wish to design the poster.
04 Final file must be 22 x 35 inches and include a four page paper outlining design inspiration (Ed Ruscha + abstract expressionism), history of the fonts chosen, examples of design inspiration and final copy of poster.
Loved the project but did not love the new, recently released movie remake of “On the Road” with Kristen Stewart. It physically hurt to watch, it was so bad.
1 comment // design, school
