Posters and promotional graphics for Print Swap, a recurring artist event at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA.) Participants exchange artist prints (and misprints!) they have made during the academic year in a free-for-all, social environment open to all MICA community members.
Spring 2023 poster
Design goals:
- Visually represent the swapping and trading action at the core of the event
- Communicate the Printmaking department's contemporary, experimental approach
- Pay tribute to historical prints and printmaking techniques
- Make the design easy/economical to print on the department Risograph machine
I settled on Cooper Black as the display typeface for Print Swap due to its playful old-school nature, and for its historical connection with the letterpress studios at MICA, which have a wood type set of Cooper Black. Alternate Gothic ATF, eminently readable and sans-serif, made a perfect counterpoint.
Working with the Risograph's limited color palette, I settled on orange and violet as the brand colors— these were bright and communicated the Printmaking department's experimental, playful nature, while still standing out from "over-done" Risograph color combos such as pink and blue.
My spring 2023 design combined images of pigeons (a Baltimore bird if ever there was one) across different printmaking mediums (etching, woodcut, and screenprint). Appropriated manicules communicate the swapping action of the event.
Fall 2023 poster
For the fall 2023 poster, I chose a more illustrative approach, directly representing the building where the event takes place, with winged printmaker bats trading art.
Here, I emphasized the experimental nature of the Printmaking department by combining photos, drawing, and appropriated images of historical prints.
Instagram-ready version of poster
Banner advertisement, for use in emails and school-wide bulletin
Spring 2024 poster
In Spring 2024, I took a more pared back, but no less illustrative approach. I created a series of printmaker characters (aprons and ink stains galore!) that repeated horizontally, speaking to the history of printmaking as a method to construct repeat patterns. Experimentation was shown by rendering the characters across a variety of orange/violet color comibinations.
Instagram-ready version of poster
Banner advertisement, for use in emails and school-wide bulletin
