Video by Vianka Villa | Multimedia Producer
The interior of ASU Tempe’s Old Main was transformed from its usual historic charm to host a gallery of modern graphic design on Thursday night.
The space was converted for the seventh annual ASU Poster Show, hosted by the Herberger Institute of Design and the Arts' Graphic Design Student Association. The show’s attention resulted in a mass of more than 250 attendees. Beginning at $15 per silent auction and $45 per live auction, nearly any participant had a chance to leave the show with a new decorative piece.
“The $15 ones are super economical, because the professionals send their posters in for free,” graphic design senior and president of the GDSA's Senior Show branch Joey Raiton said. “These posters are usually really expensive, so, really, we’re giving these students an opportunity to buy beautiful posters for a reasonable price.”
For the students of the GDSA, however, this show was more than a financial success.
“The purpose of this show is twofold, really,” Raiton said. “It is first to raise money for the Senior Show at the end of the year to showcase student work and potentially get us jobs, but then it is to see how we can work collaboratively with each other in a setting where we work as an agency.”
To ensure that the night would run smoothly, a cabinet of 39 graphic design classmates began drafting plans for the show last summer, Raiton said.
The coordinators’ first task was to contact designers.
[slideshow_deploy id='157786']
“Most of (the artists) were pretty generous,” said graphic design senior Alessandra Sica, a student involved in the Poster Show. “We were told over the summer to find at least 10 designers, so we just emailed them and they were more than willing to donate.”
Only after the professional posters were gathered could the students of the Visual Communications 5 class begin designing their own posters to publicize the show. This year’s theme, Paper Jam, was designed by graphic design senior Heather Rischmueller.
“I wanted it to celebrate print, because everything is so digital now that everything is on the web,” Rischmueller said. “I wanted to emphasize that (print) is important and that it will always be –– that print will never die.”
This idea of “celebrating print” carried over throughout the show’s preparation. Rischmueller’s poster, along with the words “the smell of ink in the air and the feeling of paper in your hands,” was tacked throughout ASU's Tempe campus to accumulate interest in the world of graphic design.
These valuable pieces by famous design studios such as DKNG and Mexifunk would not have been available, however, had the students not contacted the right people.
“This was an experience to get in touch with professionals and to get a response from someone you look up to,” said Lizelle Galaz, vice president of the GDSA's Senior Show branch. “As students starting out in a design school, it’s amazing because we’re in Arizona, and they’re all the way in New York or Greece, and we get a chance to connect with them.”
People line up to view the clocks donated to the 7th Annual Visual Communication Design Poster Show and Auction at Old Main on Nov. 6, 2014. (Photo by Emily Johnson)?Despite the potential difficulty of accessing the work of these artists, students involved have been professional enough with each annual show that they collected 100 more posters than the Poster Show last year.
“They trust us that (their posters) are not going to just be taped, and we’ll call it a day,” Galaz said. “It’s like a graphic design museum.”
Upon entering the Carson Ballroom, potential bidders were immediately presented with designs such as Milton Glaser’s “100 Ways to Have Fun with an Alligator” from New York and Gottshalk + Ash’s “Architectural Collection” from Zurich. The show featured several wooden clocks as well, each beginning at $40 a piece. This collection was the only student-made art of the night.
“They’re actually a huge sale point,” Galaz said, adding a short laugh. “Our parents love to buy them from us.”
The top clock sale of the night was “Indebted,” which explored the correlation of anxiety with excess spending through the lengthening of per each one-second notch. The clock sold for $185.
Graphic design freshman Rachel Bath and interior design freshman Mackenzie Williams look at the numerous posters at the 7th Annual Poster Show and Auction on Nov. 6, 2014 at Old Main.? (Photo by Emily Johnson)Outside of the generosity of donors, volunteers and auctioneers, however, the students prefer to showcase what they believe to be most important: the art itself.
“I think just the title of Paper Jam is like a celebration,” Galaz said. “(Paper jamming) is usually a mistake that you didn’t want to happen, but you have to take it as it comes and celebrate the design process. Printed posters are really important, even with mistakes. They’re all valuable.”
Reach the reporter at aplante@asu.edu or follow her on Twitter @aimeenplante
Like The State Press on Facebook and follow @statepress on Twitter.
Correction: Due to a reporting error, a previous version of this article misspelled the names of Lizelle Galaz and Heather Rischmueller.
