Southeast Missouri State University student publication

Graphic design student group organizes Notable Quotables art exhibit

Monday, October 19, 2015

Southeast Missouri State University's AIGA Student Group, part of the American Institute of Graphic Arts, organized an art exhibit displaying graphic design students' work revolving around significant quotes to the students.

The exhibition, called "Notable Quotables," drew over 130 submissions from Missouri and surrounding states. The submissions were then narrowed down to the 50 that will be displayed by Kate Schaefer, an alumna of Southeast and the art director and senior designer at Concord Printing, where she has worked for the past 19 years.

"There is a lot of variety," Schaefer said. "You'll see some quotes and typography that you will get right away, and for others you'll really have to think about it. There were even a couple entries that weren't even in the English language."

Schaefer said she was honored to be asked to jury the exhibition, after giving several tours about the printing process and how the graphic designers work at Concord over the years for Southeast students.

"When I first was asked to do this, I thought 'Oh, it's going to be so much fun. It should be pretty easy. I have been doing graphic design for many years, so I can do this,'" Schaefer said. "Then I got to look at all the submissions and there were so many to choose from. They were all created differently, there wasn't a whole lot of similarities."

Schaefer said the quotes varied from Edgar Allan Poe, Angelina Jolie, "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "The Goonies." She added that beyond the quotes, the approach to reinvent the text was even more varied.

"They had fonts doing all kinds of things," Schaefer said. "Fonts were running down ladders and climbing up trees and tangled up in hair. They all were able to express their quote."

Hannah Thomas, AIGA Student Group vice president, said planning the exhibition started toward the end of last semester, with more work being done over the summer and this semester.

"We sent out the submission information to schools that touch Missouri," Thomas said. "It was sent to the heads of the art departments, who got their students interested. We then received submissions that had to be 11 by 17 inches, but the rest of the composition and design was up to them."

Entries were due by Sept. 23, allowing Schaefer two weeks to look at the submissions and choose the winners.

"We are actually offering an award this year, so Kate Schaefer picked best in show, second place, third place and honorable mentions," Thomas said. "Honorable mentions just get a certificate but best in show gets $200, I believe second place gets $100 and third gets $50. It was a nice incentive to get people to submit their work."

Thomas said they have spent the last week contacting the selected entries to get prints of each to display. She added that AIGA is a national organization for graphic designers, and that this exhibition is one the largest projects the Southeast chapter does. Thomas said the last time they did the exhibition was two years ago.

Notable Quotables will be displayed from Nov. 2-12 at the River Campus Art Gallery in the Seminary Building, with it's opening reception from 5-7 p.m. on Nov. 6 to coincide with the First Friday events in November.

"There is going to be an award show and opening reception that will include a juror talk from Kate Schaefer, who will be able to speak about why she picked the work she did and what she saw when she looked at the work," Thomas said.

Schaefer said the exhibition is a great way to understand typography as an artform, and that it was the connection between the design and the meaning of the text that Schaefer most looked for in the submissions.

"You see text everywhere, fonts everywhere," Schaefer said. "Typography is about communicating the words and the feeling behind it. Typography is more than the design of the thing. It's how you can express a feeling, a mood, a declaration or something with the type of font that you use and how you implement it. So it's not just putting words down on paper."

Comments