THE CAPITAL TIMES Photo courtesy of CRAIG WELSH The Advanced Graphic Design class who worked on the Post-it project. From left: Anthony Tezak, Lisa Mauti, Monica Helt, Rosalyn Agbugui, Kristen Poole, Desiree Khouri and Adam Fanus. (Not pictured: Alison Smith) By ASHLEY LOCKARD Editor in Chief AFLSDOO@PSU.EDU This semester Craig instructor in art and communications and his Advanced Graphic Design class wanted to do something different, something off-the-wall or, rather, on it. On Thursday Feb. 9, the class participated in placing the project they had worked on for almost four weeks. The final project is on the wall in the stairwell between the second and third floors of the Library. It is a larger than life size replica of the Nittany Lion Shrine done entirely with Post-it notes. It took 1,680 varying orange shades of Post-its spanning approximately 11 ’ wide by 9’ high to replicate the image. The idea for the project came from several other Post-it murals that have been done in the past particularly the one of Alfred E. Neuman from Mad Magazine created by Wieden+Kennedy 12. WK.I2 is an experimental school/agency/ collective that began in April 2005 and is based in Portland, Ore. When asked the purpose of the project Welsh said, “[lt was] to do something visually interesting that could be shared with the whole campus. Also, in terms of classroom purpose... to examine design issues such as image editing (cropping, scale, resolution), scouting and logistics of location and installation, and public awareness.” Pulling the project together in the first few weeks of the semester was a complicated process. The first task they had to tackle was choosing an image. Welsh assigned each student to find five images each of Joe Patemo, Old Main, and the Nittany Lion Shrine. Then in class, the students looked over the images and chose the ones they thought were the best. Through discussion they realized Old Main might not be recognized at this campus as easily as the other images. Finally, they voted on the images lefi to choose the one they would actually use. Once the class chose their image they went through the process of manipulating it until it was reduced Welsh, February 27, 2006 Post-it Madness to only four different shades of gray. Using the Post-it website, they each came up with different color schemes. “We realized there were many other color options than the normal pastel varieties the office supply stores offer. Flaving looked at vibrant neon colors and the aquamarine color palette, we ultimately settled on the sunbrite color palette,” said Welsh. In order to correlate each color of Post-it to each shade of gray in the image they created a numbered grid (think of it as a paint by number). At about 7:30 p.m. that Thursday, armed with two ladders and a box of Post-it’s the class was ready to tackle the Library wall. They split the image in half and spent three hours putting the Post-its up row by row. Two people hung Post-its on each side of the image, one person handing them to the hangers, and another translating the grid. After finishing the project Lisa Mauti said, ‘it’s just one of those things that you don’t believe until you actually see it or actually have worked on it because I didn’t really think that it was going to take 1680 Post-it notes but then when we did it, it looked freakin’ awesome.” It was so “awesome” that the project was recognized by several news organizations in the area including the Middletown paper and WHP News 21, which covered the class’ project on their 5 p.m. news program on Feb. 21. “The whole process from conceptual ideas to execution was a learning experience. When Craig first asked us about the project I was really skeptical, but as the project progressed it all came together. I’m excited to possibly do something similar in the future,” said classmate Alison Smith. Will another similar project happen in the future? Welsh said, “Joe Pa was in the running - maybe he’ll show up somewhere before the semester’s done.” A Post-it photo of Alfred E. Neuman from Mad Magazine created by Wieden+Kennedy 12, an experimental school/agency/collective in Portland, Ore. Photo courtesy of wkl2.com
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers