Y Design

Have you seen the calligraphy in front of Sterling Memorial Library? Go check it out before the rain washes it away!

Yale's Calligraphy Club is responsible for this beautifully executed installation. As evinced in these photographs, the club has members experienced in Latin, Chinese, and Arabic calligraphy.

This giant "poster" is another example of something ephemeral that adds so much to the University's rich visual landscape.

I saw this screenprinted poster on Cross Campus this morning. It's eyecatching for obvious reasons: it's neon green and enormous (and presumably violates the 8.5x11" size limit on posters):

Though it's not typographically rigorous (multiple typefaces and sizes, several alignments, uneven spacing, uneasy relationships between type and margins), the piece succeeds in part because of its strong typographic hierarchy. There's an unambiguous title ("Jamming for Jane"), distinct small text (confined to the bottom half of the page), and text that is intermediate in both size and importance. 

The evidence of the handmade in this poster is part of what makes it appealing, but more consideration could have been given to craft. There are many instances where ink has bled into smaller sized letters, rendering them nearly illegible. Both heavy and low ink coverage at the edges of the poster have caused a ragged edge and something like reticulation where ink has pooled on top of itself. While this messy, playful style is certainly its own kind of visual language—and one that can be used to great effect—it feels slightly inappropriate for the content of this poster, which seeks to advertise a fundraising concert for a victim of the Boston Marathon bombings. That said, we can all appreciate the amount of labor, time, and hand work that went into the design and production of these posters. It's great to see that someone gave so much consideration to such an ephemeral medium!

This year's Lohmann Prizes were chosen last Friday. The Prizes, which celebrate excellence in undergraduate printing and design, were awarded to eight students. All of the judges noted that this year's submission pool was particularly strong. We had a hard time choosing the winners!

Cindy Hwang BK '15 was awarded first prize in the digital category for her two booklets "Politics and the English Language" and "The Simplification of the Chinese Script," seen below. We appreciated her care in selection of materials, attention to typographic detail, and thoughtful fit of form and content.

Below: detail from Cindy Hwang's "Politics and the English Language."

First prize in the letterpress category was awarded to Annie Wang BK '13 for her artist's book "Miss Behavior." The innovative binding and multi-directional reading format enhanced the content of the book, which explored attitudes toward women throughout time.

Honorable mentions were awarded to Austin Lan TC '13 for her posters promoting Yale's mental health services; Greta Parnes DC '14 for her letterpress carousel book featuring an excerpt from The Waves by Virginia Woolf; Jacqi Lee MC '14 for her digital body of work, which included the Fall 2012 issue of the Yale Literary Magazine and her book "Giorgio Morandi: Meticulously Composed"; and Andrew Sotiriou SY '13, Paul Doyle BK '13, and Isabella Huffington DC '14 for their design of the program for Cinderella: The Light of God.

Above: Austin Lan's posters. Below: Greta Parnes's carousel book.

Below: Jacqi Lee's Morandi book and text detail from the Yale Literary Magazine.

Below: Cinderella program designed by Andrew Sotiriou, Paul Doyle, and Isabella Huffington.

There were many other incredible submissions—you can see a sampling in the image gallery to the left.

Thank you to our judges (Molly Dotson, John Gambell, Basie Gitlin, Martha Highsmith, Michael Morand, and Richard Rose) for their time and input, and to Jae Rossman of Arts Library Special Collections for helping coordinate the event and allowing us to use the space.

Above: Richard Rose engrossing certificates for the prizewinners.

This bright poster caught my attention as I walked across Cross Campus this morning. Its neon colors (and the gradients formed by their transitions) are unlike the familiar agglomeration of so many sheets of plain text on copy paper and photographic-toned images. It is perhaps the only poster on this bulletin board printed full-bleed (the color extends to [and, conceptually, beyond] the edges of the paper)—note how there's no telltale white border around its edges, which marks most of the other posters as having been printed on standard letter-size paper likely off of a cluster printer. Most importantly, one compositional element dominates the picture plane: in large and roughly hewn lowercase, the letters "xs" dominate without explanation or apology. All supplementary information is relegated to small black text at the poster's top and bottom margins. The designer was rightly confident that the poster itself would serve as a point of entry for the viewer.

Imagine how this poster might look if its type were given a treatment similar to that familiar scheme used on many of the other posters on this bulletin board: if all of the information were given visual weight commensurate with its conceptual importance, nothing would stand out. The dramatic shift in scale between background texture (color, xs, photographic reproduction) and informational essentials (date, time, place, etc.) impels the viewer toward the poster for a literal closer read. 

There appear to be slight misregistrations of color screens on this poster: there's a small gap where the pink-to-blue xs doesn't quite align with its blue-to-pink photographic background. There are also two dark blots of ink on the lower left leg of the "x." These imperfections reveal the process by which the poster was created (presumably hand-pulled silkscreen -- one screen each for the two gradients and one screen for the black text) or are perhaps an ersatz reference to the traditional handcrafted method. 

The XS Collaborative's event will be held tomorrow at 5.30 pm at 202-208 College Street.