D3 F21 Symposium

A typography assignment we had was to create a symposium poster based on a larger topic. Our group focused on mental health which led me to branch into music therapy. In this symposium poster I collaged ripped up sheet music to create a brain shape with the tile "Compose Yourself" representing how music therapy can unite people and help heal the mind.

This project's objective is to create a poster promoting information to an audience typographically. I chose art therapy for my topic and used physical art materials to explore and create a simple design to convey a message. I tried showing the hands-on aspects of art therapy, using paint to create the hand stamped image for my design. I created two sized hands to show the wide age range for art therapy. The many speakers are related to the psychology field, as well as the health field at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, who is the sponsor of this symposium. I really enjoyed this topic and enjoyed getting messy to create the painted design.

This project involved making a poster for a symposium of any topic, while utilizing “type as imagery.” I focused my topic on racism in healthcare to highlight the disparities and discrimination people of color face, not only in their daily lives, but also in healthcare institutions (whether patient or provider). My process began with a mind map, brainstorming ideas, and sketching the “hero image” of the poster. I used bandaids of different skin tones to bring attention to the importance of diversity in health and to symbolically represent that “racism (both within healthcare and outside of it) is simply not a band-aid solution.” This also fulfilled the “type as image” requirement. I also was very thoughtful when determining the symposium speakers, ensuring their relevance and credibility to the subject. As a designer with a background in the health sciences, this is a topic I relate to and am very passionate about! Key learning: Working with type as image, designing for others, information design.

I chose to create my symposium poster on the importance of physical activity on mental wellness. I started with my major fact about Alzheimer's and centered by fifty fifty line idea around that. I drew a brain as the main imagery to go along with the fact and visualize the concept of the symposium. By using the thick lettering, I was keeping the poster simple and straight the point, shifting the importance to the fact within the center that would draw people in.

A poster created to organize text to deliver important information to an audience and express meaning through our typography choices. We created a poster for an upcoming symposium on a group topic to convey the excitement for the symposium topic to its intended audience and the information itself had to constitute the “imagery” of the poster. We had to carefully consider the typographic hierarchy of the information we sought to present. The information we had to organize and present included the contents of the symposium, the calendar of events, and a quick brief of the main speakers. We broke up into small groups of 3 to decide on a symposium topic as well as to gather information. We then broke off on our own to design our own version and interpretations of the symposium poster. We went through trials of typography explorations where I ended up cutting my letters for my title out of bubble wrap and incorporating them into my poster. After continuous learning and experimenting with different levels of hierarchy to present information and balance my poster, I ended up with my final symposium poster.

The purpose of this Symposium Project was to design a Symposium Poster that addressed a current issue going on in the world and used typography to show awareness to that subject. I decided to make my poster on the topic, Asian Hate crimes. In order to make this poster have the asian aesthetic, I had to used images as my text like switching out the letter "O" in the word Stop as a rice ball or even adding logos to real organizations to bring out the authenticity of the topic.

The problem to solve for the Symposium Poster was to create an engaging poster with elements of typography that need to inform people of the event. With info such as the title, guest speakers, location, time and date, it was challenging to know where to put each point of information on the poster. My solution was to use the light blue background to make the points of information stand out more to the reader. In the background, you can see the word, "breathe" blend in to remind the viewer that it is a mental health symposium