Design School Confidential

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Job:05-11998/12412 Title:RP-Design School Con dential

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Job:05-11998/12412 Title:RP-Design School Con dential

#175 Dtp:160(P) Page:134

project brief

The creative act of collage can provide end-

less inspiration for graphic design students.

Everything in a graphic designer’s bag of

tricks—words, ephemera, materials, colors, and

contexts—can be recombined to create unique

visual/verbal phenomena. These visual confi gu-

rations engage both our minds and our eyes and

challenge our preconceptions. Collage is at once

a process and a result. It has been employed for

at least a century, and its potential as a creative

force shows no sign of being exhausted. As a

methodology collage is invaluable. Once a proj-

ect is underway in our studio, more often than

not, the tossed-aside pile of scraps at the edge

of the desktop is far more provocative than the

project being “designed.”

These unexpected accidents that exist be-

hind the scenes, in drawers layered with cut-up

colored paper from earlier creative activities,

have sparked and sustained our creative energy

for decades. In teaching, I have also employed

collage to make intuition a more tangible, teach-

able experience. This exercise uses thousands

of pieces of chopped-up magazines as the cata-

lyst for a liberating exercise in how content and

form can be negotiated. The fl uidity of mixing

and stirring up pieces and the resulting happy

accidents—contrast, scale shifts, and collisions—

releases an uninhibited sense of play.

Materials needed: Black construction pa-

per to make a pair of L-shaped framing pieces

approximately 8 to 10 inches (20.5 to 25.5 cm)

long in each direction. Glue stick and/or clear

tape, pencils, a black felt-tipped pen, white pa-

per, scissors or X-Acto knife, and tracing paper.

Compositions will be arranged from cut

scrap paper. Begin intuitively, sorting through

the pile with the framers to see if anything in-

teresting seems to be happening. The L’s can be

focused on a small area or a larger fi eld. Random

compositions are framed by the croppers, taped

in place, outlined with a pen and trimmed, then

glued onto a white sheet of paper. Initially, these

should be generated as quickly and with as little

calculated thought as possible. Gradually, begin

working more intentionally, looking for relation-

ships among the scrap pieces like colors and sur-

face. Be more deliberate about the alignments as

you assemble additional collages. Choose some

of your strongest compositions and photocopy

them. Observe the difference in the collage as

the color is removed and the surface becomes

more homogeneous. Keep your favorite com-

positions in a sketchbook for future reference.

Notice that even if the overall composition is

weak, there may be an inspiring detail—perhaps

the way a letter is cropped or how a piece of an

image meets a piece of type.

project goal

To encounter form and content as malleable; to

think beyond your preconceptions to activate

space and meaning; to experience the give-and-

take of a fl uid creative process.

Class: Poster Design

Level: Junior, Senior, and Graduate Elective

Faculty: Nancy Skolos

Duration of Project: Three Weeks

Rhode Island School of Design

Providence, Rhode Island, USA

Collage Poster Workshop

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