The description of the poster design process

The goal:
"Commercial Art" is often much different that "Fine Art." There are some exceptions such as Walt Disney's Fantasia where fine and commercial art were combined. The design concept for the ACM/ICPC Aizu Regional Contest poster was to be a work of fine art, where bold shapes of sponsoring company logos "Commercial Art " and a painting "Fine Art" were brought together. The abstract shapes and forms reflect the shapes of the contest's participating countries in Asia as well as the local region of Mt. Bandai and the terraced rice fields of Aizu. The letters of ACM/ICPC are a bright yellow band at the top - like the sun or light, a powerful symbol traditionally in Japan. The letters of the University of Aizu are in brilliant blue green underneath - like the growing rice nurtured by the sunlight. It is interesting to note the quite different effect and appearance of the kanji from the alphabetic letters, even though the values were set the same for the digital effects and indexed colors for both versions. The shapes are organic and not precise, indicative of the true nature of a computer - though often thought of by the inexperienced as unyieldingly precise. The idea was to take "branding" logos and work them into an abstract background in an effort to make something bold and interesting, a provocative fine art work both loved and hated as any good fine art work might be while attracting attention to significant information as any good commercial art work should.

The outcome:
The work is a blend of fine and commercial art. The advertising goal set the placement and size of many parts of the poster design so that the layout reflects the varied interests of the academic and sponsoring entities. This has introduced an important aspect to the work, that is the various levels of social structure and polite form of business communication, influencing the visual artistic qualities of the work.

The interest and involvement in the design process by many persons tripled the amount of time and effort, but clearly was rewarding for all concerned. The layout and design of the poster started by me is now more of a collaborative effort. However the abstract painting that serves as a background is solely my work. As it seems we are all given our parts to play, I was happy to take the role of the artist.

Carl W. Vilbrandt,

University of Aizu