ART 220 · Charleston Southern University · Fall 2026
Project 2. Illustrated Poster (4 weeks, with Fall Break)
A poster for a real Charleston exhibition or festival, or a recent film or book, made from a drawing you make by hand. You pick one subject from a list of thirteen, and the words the poster has to carry are given to you. You finish a real drawing on paper, then capture it and build the poster from it at 18 by 24 inches, in whatever software suits it: cleaned and colored in Photoshop, traced to vector in Illustrator, or anything else. The words can be drawn by hand, set in a font, or kept small so the picture does the talking; whichever you choose, you plan them in the first thumbnail. The file is set up for screenprint, with each color on its own solid black layer and registration marks, so it is ready if we get into a screenprint shop to print. That may not happen. It has to stop someone from across a room and still read as a small image on a phone. You will learn how poster artists handle words and pictures together, mark-making that survives capture, scanning and clean-up, and color under a drawn line.
The run
Every due date is a class day. Work is turned in on Blackboard, presented in class, or both. The late-work policy is in the syllabus.
Project 2. Illustrated Poster (4 weeks, with Fall Break)
A poster for a real Charleston exhibition or festival, or a recent film or book, made from a drawing you make by hand. You pick one subject from a list of thirteen, and the words the poster has to carry are given to you. You finish a real drawing on paper, then capture it and build the poster from it at 18 by 24 inches, in whatever software suits it: cleaned and colored in Photoshop, traced to vector in Illustrator, or anything else. The words can be drawn by hand, set in a font, or kept small so the picture does the talking; whichever you choose, you plan them in the first thumbnail. The file is set up for screenprint, with each color on its own solid black layer and registration marks, so it is ready if we get into a screenprint shop to print. That may not happen. It has to stop someone from across a room and still read as a small image on a phone. You will learn how poster artists handle words and pictures together, mark-making that survives capture, scanning and clean-up, and color under a drawn line.
- You are given
- Pick one subject from the thirteen below: a real exhibition or festival in Charleston, or a recent film or book. Check the venue's own page for the dates before you put them on the poster.Exhibition. Rodin: All the Truth of Nature. Gibbes Museum of Art, through Jan 17, 2027.Exhibition. Fighting for Freedom: Black Craftspeople and the Pursuit of Independence. Gibbes Museum of Art, Oct 16, 2026 to May 9, 2027.Exhibition. GROUNDED IN GRAIN, WASHED IN THE WATER. Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art, through Dec 5, 2026.Exhibition. middle of somewhere: the art and the legacy of Black Southern makers. International African American Museum. No closing date is announced, so this poster says on view now in place of a date range.Festival. Charleston Literary Festival. Dock Street Theatre, Nov 6 to 15, 2026.Festival. Southeastern Wildlife Exposition. Marion Square and venues downtown, Feb 12 to 14, 2027.Festival. Charleston Wine + Food. Across the city, Mar 3 to 7, 2027.Film. Past Lives. Celine Song, 2023.Film. Everything Everywhere All at Once. Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, 2022.Film. Sinners. Ryan Coogler, 2025.Book. Demon Copperhead. Barbara Kingsolver, 2022. She speaks at the Literary Festival in November.Book. James. Percival Everett, 2024.Book. Klara and the Sun. Kazuo Ishiguro, 2021.The words, in order of size. An exhibition or festival carries the title, the venue, the dates and the website. A film or book carries the title, the director or author and the year, then the invented night: Tuesdays at 7 PM, Library Room 110, free and open to everyone. Nothing else.Watch, read or go see your subject before you draw it. Do not look at the official poster or book cover until your thumbnails are done. Want a different subject? Bring it Sep 22.
- You will learn to
- Make one image do a poster's job: stop a person, tell them what the thing is, then hold up on a second look.Choose how the words work with the picture: drawn, set in a font, or kept small, and plan that choice from the first thumbnail.Draw for reproduction: marks that survive the scanner and hold up when the sheet doubles in size.Carry a finished drawing onto the poster: capture it, clean it, and color or vectorize it without losing what made it a drawing.Present the work and defend the concept in critique.
- What you make
- One poster, 18 by 24 inches, portrait.The picture is drawn by hand on paper at 9 by 12 inches or larger, the same proportion as the poster.The words are yours to handle one of three ways: drawn by hand on paper with the picture, set in one type family chosen for the subject, or set small so the picture carries the poster. The small print may always be set in a font.Captured so the finished file is 18 by 24 inches at 300 ppi. A 9 by 12 drawing scans at 600.Line separated from the background and color added in any software. Scanned line colored in Photoshop, or traced to vector in Illustrator, both work. Three colors plus the line, and the words use those same colors. Full color is allowed if you prepare it for process printing (CMYK halftone) or pull it back to flat colors.Set up for screenprint: every color, the line included, sits on its own layer in solid black, with the same registration marks on every layer. We will try to get into a screenprint shop to print the posters, and it may not happen. The file has to be ready either way.The poster is built from the finished drawing. Lettering or sketches may be digitized and vectorized; a picture drawn from scratch on the computer does not meet the brief.
- Bring
- Paper for the final: a pad of smooth bristol or mixed-media paper, 9 by 12 inches or larger. 11 by 14 gives you more room and keeps close to the proportion.Cheap paper for thumbnails and studies, and a few sheets of tracing paper. Tracing over your last try is the fastest way to improve a drawing or a letter.Pencils, an HB and a 2B, with a white vinyl or kneaded eraser and a sharpener.Black ink: fineliners in three widths, such as 01, 05 and 08, and a brush pen or a broad black marker for fills.A ruler, 12 inches or longer, and low-tack tape.Your phone camera or a scanner for capture, and the flash drive you already bring.Optional: a drawing tablet. Nothing in the project requires one.
- Hand in
- The layered working file, Photoshop or Illustrator: drawing, color and words on their own named layers.A flattened PDF at 18 by 24, and the proof. The proof is the final: a printout of the poster to scale, at a size you can print yourself, like 6 by 8 on letter paper.The original drawing, on paper, hung beside the proof at the critique.Separations: one PDF page per color, each in solid black with registration marks, plus a color key.Your in-class studies, thumbnails and words studies, photographed or scanned, in one PDF.
- Graded on
- Concept: the poster says one thing about its subject. A picture of the main character with the title on top is a record of the subject and carries no idea.Formal resolution: the words and the picture were planned together and look like one poster. It holds from across the room and as a phone-size image.Craft: a clean capture, the line separated, color tight to the drawing, whether pixels or vector, layers named. Drawn letters are even in weight and spaced by eye; set type is one family, sized and placed on purpose. The separations are clean enough for a printer to use.Process: the in-class studies are done, the thumbnails show real range, and the words were tried more than one way.
- Milestones
- Sep 17, in class: pick a subject from the list, and try its words three ways on paper.Sep 22, in class: a mark sheet scanned and photographed, and a thumbnail sprint. Supplies in hand.Sep 24: p2a, your subject, 12 thumbnails with the words placed in every one, the one you are taking forward marked, and a words study at a larger size. In class: the phone test, a three-value plan, and the final drawing starts.Sep 29, in class: Exercise 4, then drawing time with desk visits.Oct 1: p2b, the finished drawing, captured in class and cleaned, line separated in a working file, raster or vector.Oct 6, in class: color for print, spot colors and separations, then work time with desk visits. Get the poster to three colors plus the line, each on its own ink layer.Oct 8, in class: the wall and phone test on a small print, then a work day with desk critiques. Fall Break is finishing time.Oct 15: final, the proof on the wall beside the original drawing. Done means the hand-in list is complete.
- AI use
- Ideation is Open, disclosed and cited. Output is Closed: the drawing is yours on paper and the finish is yours on the computer.
ThuSep 24
Title, thumbnails and words study
Your subject from the list and the exact words the poster carries. Your thumbnail pages: the subject worked through as an object, a symbol, a pattern, words, and a scene, one folded page of eight each, plus the sheet where you refined the ones you liked, with the one you are taking forward marked. One study of the words at a larger size: drawn letters, or your font printed and placed on the sketch.
ThuOct 1
Finished drawing, captured
Your finished drawing on paper, lettering included if you drew it, captured in class and cleaned up, with the line separated from the background in a working file, Photoshop or Illustrator.
TueOct 13no class
Fall Break
Final critique
The final loops screened and defended, in the exam slot the registrar assigns. The final project is due at the start. You talk about what the image is for, what you tried, and what you would do next.
Dec 8 to Dec 14
The last class
What is in the repository at the end of class is what is graded.
Finding the audience
Your personal statement points at the audiences you already know. Bring three candidates, each found in one of these four places, due Sep 9.
- A world you know
- A craft, a job you have held, a subject you are inside. You already know what the people in it buy and what they complain about.
- Your community
- A group or place you belong to. You can ask people directly what they need.
- Yourself
- You would use this product if someone sold it to you right. The risk is that you are the only one; the research will tell you.
- A wild card
- An audience that simply interests you. Held to the same evidence as the other three.
Problem framing
Problem framing is discovering and defining a problem your audience shares. It comes from design thinking, which puts people at the center of the work. Skip it and nobody can see what your product is for. Answer four questions, then compress the answers into one statement.
- Who
- Who has the problem, and how do you know?
- What
- What is the problem, and what signs show it?
- Why
- Why solve it, and what does it cost unsolved?
- Where
- In what circumstances does it show up?
Your problem statement is the four answers written as one short statement from the audience's side, due Sep 14.
The creative brief distills what the pitch settled: the client, the budget, the date, the audience, and the business problem. It is the reference every later phase answers to.
The deck
You prepare and present a deck of your research and initial insights: nine slides, three minutes.
01
Cover
The subject, one line saying what it is, your name and the date. No version number; the repository tracks versions.
02
The product
What it is and what it can do, compressed out of your problem statement. One slide. The source is on it.
03
The audience
Specific people, named the way you would name them to a client. Not a demographic bracket.
04
The problem
One sentence, set large, alone on the slide. If it needs a second sentence it is two problems.
05
The evidence
What you actually found, sourced. This slide decides whether the problem is real.
06
What they buy today
What the audience uses instead, and what those choices cost them.
07
The four questions
Who, what, why, and where, answered short. This is where a bad problem gets caught early.
08
What you do not know
The open questions, written down as questions. Every honest deck has some.
09
What the machine did
The three lines. Same format as everything else you hand in.
How you show your work
The work lives in one repository, with a running log of what you decided and what the machine did. How to set both up, and what a good entry looks like, gets its own note early in the term.
- The stand-up
- Work sessions open with three minutes each, screen up: what moved, what is stuck, what you will have done by next time. Participation is graded here. The rest of the session is yours to work in, with me in the room.
- Say what moved
- When a piece is re-presented, one line on what changed and why: critique, evidence, or the machine.
- What the machine did
- Three lines closing every piece you hand in: the tools you used by name; what you asked for and what came back; what you changed, cut or overruled. "None" is a complete answer.
- The rule under all of it
- Use AI on anything in this course, and defend everything you turn in as your own decision. Check every fact a model gives you; when one fails in the room, the error is yours.
How it is graded
Every piece of work is graded on the same four counts, each a quarter of that piece's grade. Participation and presentations are graded on their own; their weights, and each milestone's, are in the syllabus.
- Participation/Process · 25%
- Contributing to class discussions and critiques; improving work as a result of research and iteration.
- Concept · 25%
- Responding to the problem statement innovatively; thinking critically about work based on critiques, readings and discussions.
- Formal Resolution · 25%
- Making work that is aesthetically sophisticated, effective and appropriate given concept and context.
- Craft · 25%
- Taking care in manufacture of work; showing technical ability.