Interpreting Constitutional Amendments

Project Brief

Design a poster representing one of the 27 amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Your poster can remind people of the amendment’s original purpose and importance, raise awareness about a particular issue related to the amendment, or call for a change to the amendment itself. There are plenty of high profile issues in the news now that directly relate to some amendments: freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to keep and bear arms, and the right to vote, to name a few. Your audience is college students on this campus.

Learning Objectives

• Integrate text + image using the four methods described in the book Type, Image, Message by Skolos + Wedell
• Recognize the design opportunities that come with using type as an image
• Work in large scale, and encourage the viewer to engage with the poster from various distances

Deliverables

• One 16 by 22 inch poster
• Printed in color
• Text from the selected amendment must be included (but does not need to be the primary read)

Readings/Resources

Type, Image, Message by Skolos + Wedell
http://www.typographicposters.com

Reflections

This project was an effective way to teach students about combining type + image. It was challenging subject matter but since they got to choose their own Amendment there was something for everyone. In the future, it might be more efficient to assign students specific Amendments so that at least three or four people are working on the same one. Students learned a lot about the power of using type as the primary form of communication. Virtually all of them started with images rather than text to represent ideas about equality and the right to vote. The images were all cliches because it’s hard to represent such abstract broad ideas with a single image that people can understand. In critiques we always referred back to the four ways to combine type + image (as discussed in the Skolos Wedell book). These have been helpful as they have moved on to other projects, for both print and for the screen. I have used the same poster project and image/type principles to assign Vote posters during election years. The same issues come up (they all rely on images rather than text). But as they work through the problem they start to recognize how using words, when compelling enough, can drive the solution.