Berlin Appeals 2021 – Poster Design Workshop

Posters are a public matter. As life-sized images, they dominate in the public space and affect us with their unavoidable messages. This relationship between the poster and space will be the focus of the workshop. We will create poetic posters that will make the voices of young designers seen the city streets of 2021.

By considering the interchangeability of artistic expressions and sociopolitical persuasion, we will establish a specific attitude in a personal and contemporary interpretation of ‘the poster’. Focusing on individual positions, we will find our personal space in public to reflect on our stories as observers, designers, authors, researchers, mediators, publishers, and human beings.

Your experience will guide you through the subsequent design process where we will deal with the following questions:

• How do I develop my message out of my research field?
• What is the interplay between its content and form?
• What are the appropriate rhetorical means to express my message?
• What role do the different iconic and typographic components play, and how do they interlace? 

The output is your appeal for and in the public space in the form of a poster.

PARTICIPANTS

The workshop is aimed at people interested in questions of creative authorship, applied on the poster as a medium, dealing with text, graphic images, and typography as tools. Preferably participants with design or artistic background and basic knowledge of visual communication.

REQUIREMENTS

Laptop with an installed layout program.

SCHEDULE

Day 1: Introduction, input lectures, warm-up exercises, research
Day 2: Research summaries, conceptional phase, individual mentoring
Day 3: Lecture, elaboration, individual mentoring
Day 4: Layout phase, individual mentorings
Day 5: Production and final presentation

Thomas Lehner is a graphic designer, author and lecturer. His particular focus lies on the poetry of graphic expression thus inventing new roles (“Maler Müller und seine Bilder”, 2021) and challenging the discipline’s definition (Grafik als Mäeutik, since 2021). Dedicating 10 years to applied design for art and culture (Thomas Lehner Studio, Berlin), he taught visual communication at the University of the Arts Berlin (basics-blog.de). Having completed his MA of Arts in Iconic Research (HGK Basel FHNW, 2021), he now lives, works and teaches in Basel, Fribourg and Berlin.

Judith Holly is a graphic designer with a special interest in experimental design methods. In her practice, the public space („Pashkevilim in Mea Shearim“) as well as aspects of staging („Talking to Talking Images“) play central roles. She studied Visual Communication at the Berlin University of the Arts (BA of Arts, 2018) and the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem, before graduating in Iconic Research at the Basel School of Design (MA of Arts, 2021). Her design-ethnographic BA thesis has been published and presented several times (Tÿpo St. Gallen 2019, DGTF Annual Conference 2018, SGD Lecture 2020). Currently Judith Holly lives and works in Vienna.