My thoughts and a little Research
A Tale of Two Cities:Narrative Archive of Memories II
This is an exhibition poster created by the influential Korean design duo Suki & Min for an exhibition at the Arko Art Center. This exhibition poster is not actually the original, the original from 2017 was inspired by colors found in everyday Seoul signage, this 2018 adaption uses a palette inspired by imaginary southern towns. I feel like this creates a deliberate sense of displacement, making the poster pop against a real-world environment. The designers use a strategy of extreme scale contrast which is what I would say initially drew me towards it - blowing up the English title so large that it bleeds off the edges and transforming the letters to abstract shapes. Underneath the foreground is a dense Korean text that acts as a structural grid which creates a really nice tension between the loud colorful front contrasting with the quiet informative (I’m guessing it’s informative) background.
I feel like this design feels like a metaphor. The bright overlapping letters mimic the chaos of neon signs and commercial branding while the small justified text blocks represent the orderly life people live there. The layering effectively communicated the ‘tale’ of two cities by showing how different narratives (public and private) constantly overlap and compete for our attention.
I think this poster is really helpful and can be relevant to my work because it treats typography as an image proving text doesn’t always have to be perfectly legible to be meaningful. Sometimes color, scale and the vibe of a word can communicate more than the actual definition. I also really like the use of a visible grid even with all the overlap in the foreground, you can still see a clear visible grid within the background and the foreground (more so background as there’s no overlap) and I think this just keeps it grounded and professional keeping a clean layout which feels modern and aesthetically pleasing.
Comment if you like my poster choice! Very Colorful :)
