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