The poster is a fundamental part of graphic design that has existed since the 1800s. Throughout the years, its purposes and aesthetics have changed, but its format has adapted very little. My thesis project seeks to define the traditional format of the poster, and then challenge the definition to expand the audience’s understanding of what a poster is and isn’t. The definition: A poster is printed, two-dimensional, and static. 

The final form of this project came from challenging the three aspects of a poster defined above. Using typographic shadows, dimensional objects, and interaction between the two, this project discusses both the format of the poster as well as the exploration of a space. 

The initial idea for my thesis came from an observation about Stefan Sagmeister’s 1999 Detroit AIGA Poster. It occurred to me that all the information contained on the poster could be found etched into Sagmeister’s own body—the final product was simply a photograph. In other words, his own body was the poster. This observation led me to think, “What else can be a poster?” 

My intended audience for this thesis is designers, in hopes that they, along with myself, will be challenged in their own perceptions of what a poster is and isn’t. Although my thesis project should be understandable to a non-designer audience, the explorations and research.

From here, I began sketching both on paper and physically to see what form this project could take. My ideas specifically sought to challenge these three aspects of a poster I had defined. Instead of printed, could a poster be made of shaving cream? Be sewn on? Be a shadow? Instead of being two-dimensional, could a poster be a chair? A lamp? An umbrella? And lastly, if a poster wasn’t static, how would it move? Could it be rotated? Rolled up like toilet paper? Blown away by a fan? 

As I moved into this foreign territory of combining performance art and design, I began to search for other designers and artists also using movement in their work.

The work of The Rodina—a Netherlands-based studio—piqued my interest as a place that specializes in what they call “performative design.” Pictured here is the work of designer Tereza Ruller who dons these graphical capes to become a human poster, and then performs various acts discussing issues like xenophobia and beauty standards.

I also studied the work of Oskar Schlemmer, an artist from the Bauhaus theatre workshop. Schlemmer’s work focused on the stage studied the experience of the body in space, exemplified best in his 1922 work titled Das triadisches ballett, or “The Triadic Ballet.” In this piece, dancers in large mechanical costumes move across spatially-aware stages to create his vision of choreographed geometry. I took a lot of inspiration from this work, however, Schlemmer’s work focused more heavily on costume design and how the body moved through space rather than the creation of the spaces themselves like I was.

I went through yet another round of sketching, brainstorming ideas for movement, materials, and how these could work together with typography. I began looking at existing installation and performance art for inspiration, and found an abundance of interesting examples. I also looked at unique applications of physical lettering to see how the typography could live in the space I was creating.

It was at this point I came to the problem that I could find virtually no examples of pieces that reconciled both the movement of performance art and then applied it to type specifically for this "performative typography" piece I was envisioning. So I returned to my original sketches and looked through the viable options I previously made. 

This led me back to an experiment I did using shadows, and I thought that this could be the solve to making performative type. I felt using shadows matched my concept of experiencing space as shadow is something that can be projected into an area without physically taking up space, but at the same time conforms to the dimensionality of that space.

I set out conducting tests with shadows, and found myself pleasantly surprised with how well the type could be projected on the ground. Additionally, I liked how the letterforms felt more organic being cut out of the paper and how the counterforms moved in and out of place.

One of the most interesting tests I ran involved putting a pedestal under the projected type, and then simply moving the type template around. This was a good way—I felt—to show how the shadow conforms to its projected shape, and in a sense, explores the spaces around it itself. As a result, I created three-dimensional structures with the intention of shadowed type moving across them and distorting it at different angles. The typographic cutouts were made as either cutouts from large pieces of paper, or made as individually-cut letters pasted onto a transparent sheet.