Associate Professor,
Rhode Island School of Design
Principal, Skolos + Wedell, Canton, MA
skolos-wedell.com
Title: Design Fellowship Poster
Company: Walker Art Center
Category: Posters
I just loved the deadpan humor in this piece. It is rare to see a design that is so conceptually clever pay off with an equally brilliant visual delivery. Therefore this exceptional poster had to be my judge’s pick. It brought to mind a quote in Adrian Shauhnessy’s recent book, How to be a Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul: “Design studios are a mixture of slave camp and enchanted playground; the good ones maintain a balance between these two polarities. ”It follows then that the poster for the Walker Graphic Design Fellowship would portray the coveted internship as part playpen and part prison camp. The poster’s elaborate construction, with its inherent production values makes a powerful statement: This Fellowship is not for the faint of heart! Rather the poster is skillfully reaching out to an elite audience of young talents yearning to find a place to be both creative and prolific. While the poster’s intrigue is immediate, it reveals many ironic subtleties, as one looks closer- the ubiquitous grid made of wire, the significance of the “frame,” and the juxtaposition of images and words between the printed pieces with the human figures below. This is the mark of an exceptional poster, one with an aggregate message that is brilliantly reinforced at each viewing distance.
More About Nancy Skolos: Nancy Skolos and her husband, Thomas Wedell, are principals of Skolos + Wedell, an interdisciplinary design and photography studio. They create collaged, three-dimensional images influenced by modern painting, technology and architecture. Their images have culminated into posters, corporate identities, books, exhibits, websites and videos for many high-technology clients. The studio’s work has received numerous awards including: the Silver Prize, Lahti Poster Biennale and the Bronze Prize, International Triennial of Posters Toyama, Japan. Group exhibits include: 30 Posters on the Environment and Development, Rio de Janeiro; The Modern Poster, The Museum of Modern Art, New York and Festival d’Affiches de Chaumont, France. Skolos + Wedell’s posters are included in the graphic design collections of the Museum of Modern Art, The Library of Congress, the Museum fur Gestaltung, Zurich, Switzerland, and Bibliotheque Nationale de France.