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 design artist with a strong interest in structural transformations through the design process. A key aspect of his approach is to create aesthetic structures for individual empowerment. His commissioned works, mostly for the arts and the educational and social sectors, has been awarded, published, and exhibited. From 2013 to 2018, he held the position of an assistant professor at the University of the Arts Berlin, where he founded the Basic Blog for the visual communication institute. He is currently an MA candidate in the Iconic Research program at the Basel School of Design.

Judith Holly is a graphic designer with a focus on experimental design methods, often working with performative settings. She uses her practice as a means of expression to discover, investigate, and mediate social topics. With a critical design approach, she is not only working visually but also considers her responsibility for the content. Most recently, she presented in a lecture series hosted by the Swiss Graphic Designers (SGD) in 2020, Tÿpo St. Gallen Conference 2019, the Annual Conference of the German Society for Design Theory and Research (DGTF) in 2018, as well as TYPO Berlin Conference 2018. Currently, she is an MA candidate in the Iconic Research program at the Basel School of Design, having studied at the University of Arts Berlin and the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem between 2014 and 2018.