Design Basics – On making a poster that makes sense: a Graphic-based dialogue within (a)Bauhaus Context

Kursbeschreibung nur auf Englisch!

Posters have long served as powerful tools for communication, shaping dominant discourses and documenting sociopolitical transformations. Yet in today’s accelerated digital age—where information is consumed fleetingly and attention spans are fractured— how can "slow" mediums like posters retain their relevance and still make sense? What matters are still worth creating tension or sparking dialogue for, in the age of algorithmic realm of knowledge and ephemeral content?

This course experiments with the process of poster-making, revisiting its communicative power beyond conventional roles as advertising medium for events, festivals, or political campaigns. It explores the poster’s potential as a medium for personal and collective development and expression—particularly in a world dominated by algorithms, trends, and virtual spaces. Participants will examine how to articulate perceptions, emotions, and critical positions, operating outside the constraints of censorship, publishing policies, and consumer-driven strategies.

The course combines hybrid methodologies (analog and digital approaches, private and public realms, in studio and public space interventions) as the process of poster creation. Participants will translate personal and shared experiences into visual and linguistic elements.

This collaborative process fosters meaningful artistic production, enabling participants to engage with both their inner selves and the public sphere.

Course Components:

During the period of the course, we will depend on the interplay of the following three components as a framework for the production process:

• Discussions:
  • Examine relevant socially and politically critical artistic movements such as Imaginary Bauhaus, by addressing the role and reputation of Bauhaus, as a starting point of tensions between political and artistic standpoints and interpretations
  • Explore the influence of current trends and discourses, from our time, on structuring the subjective agency of individuals, in the body of the practice, as engaging tool with sociopolitical issues, and negotiating with the public.
• Interventions:
  • Using routes, sceneries and impressions from the city of Weimar as the space of our shared experience during the course. Elaborating on visual and conceptual elements to examine and elaborate on the personal negotiations with public, influenced by the multi-perspectives of participants.
• Cyanotype as “possible” Method and Inquiry::
  • We will investigate cyanotype’s potential as a medium for poster-making and as a method of artistic research. Participants will experiment with the process, to interrogate relationships between self statement, the other perception, and the power of the surrounding space-
  • For the final project, participants will develop a collective statement and concept, using cyanotype to translate their critical or personal inquiries into tangible form to be exhibited, in the last day of the course.

Update: 31.03.25