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.