ASU students will have the opportunity to decorate their space with unique artwork while supporting their fellow Sun Devils at the Visual Communication Design Poster Show auction on Thursday, Oct. 26.
The event started in 2008 as a way for students to showcase posters donated by artists located in the cities where they had their summer internships, but has since become an auction featuring designs from artists all around the world.
The event is held by the Graphic Design Senior Student Association, and the money raised during the auction will go toward funding the visual communication design senior students’ Annual Graduation Exhibition, which will be held for the 26th year in May, 2018.
Visual Communication Design Poster Show promotional video, poster artwork by graphic design senior Jordan Boudreau.
According to Andrew Salomon, a graphic design senior and president of the GDSSA, the poster show is a community event essential to the success of the seniors’ final project, which they spend all year researching and designing.
“We have a social issue (topic) that we defend all year,” Salomon said. “Then, the exhibition is our final graduation assignment, basically, where everyone presents all their research and solutions to the problem that they’re trying to find.”
Salomon said the posters will be sold in a silent auction. The design seniors will also be selling clocks they have built as part of their yearlong project.
Senior graphic design students are responsible for contacting artists and acquiring the posters from designers they admire. This year, the students received over 500 posters for the auction.
The poster show is also featured as one of the first events of Phoenix Design Week, a collection of events for Arizona residents interested in a variety of design topics and mediums.
Lauren Schaecher, graphic design senior and treasurer of the GDSSA, said that this year the show will include posters from alumni, local artists and artists from all around the world, showcasing the creative diversity of the pieces. Last year, all of the posters sold in the show were from alumni of the design program.
She also said that the event is entirely organized and run by the students.
“It’s our first event as a class that we organized all ourselves, and we have to make sure that it’s run correctly,” said Schaecher. “It’s also a good group event before we have to do our senior exhibition.”
Amanda Gomez, a graphic design junior, attended the poster show last year and said it was a great experience for her to see the practical applications of what she is learning.
“It was a cool experience of seeing what I can achieve as a designer and what my potential is after I go through the first three years of the program,” Gomez said.
She also said she is excited to go this year because there will be more posters from a variety of designers, and she hopes to purchase a poster herself.
“The fact that you don’t really have to know the designer or know what the (background) is, but that you can just like the design and want to purchase from there is a really cool idea,” Gomez said. “It can apply to anyone.”
The 10th annual Visual Communication Design Poster Show is free and open to the public and will be on Oct. 26 from 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at the Tempe Center Annex.
Reach the reporter at abpotter@asu.edu and follow @abpotter4 on Twitter.
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