Themester

IU alum Cassia Chryssovergis returned as one of the designers in this year’s Themester poster series. As an undergraduate, Chryssovergis designed a poster for Themester 2020 Democracy. Chryssovergis graduated in May 2021 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Graphic Design from the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design. Chryssovergis currently does freelance work and runs an Etsy shop, ByJinxDesigns, with her twin sister Sophia where they sell their crochet work and occasional prints. Her other art and design work can be found on Instagram: @byjinxdesigns. 

 

This year’s theme is Lux et Veritas, or Light and Truth. What does that mean to you and how did you incorporate elements of that into the design? 

When I first heard about the theme and I heard the words light and truth together, I started thinking of when you find out the truth about something, that kind of lightbulb moment that happens. That’s the main inspiration I had, so I tried to represent that with my poster, but not in a super literal way. I didn’t want to just put a lightbulb on my poster, so I was trying to represent that moment of enlightenment with color and shape.  

I have the darkness of the poster creeping in from the corners, but the center of the poster is a bright yellow circle that radiates outwards.  

 

Walk me through the creative process of creating the poster design. Where did your inspiration stem from and how did that develop into the final product? 

When I first started sketching for this project, I had quite a few different sketches and some of them were literal, like I was talking about during the first question. I did have some sketches with lightbulbs and other sources of light on there, like fire and lamps. But I didn’t want to be too literal because the concept itself is abstract.  

An “aha!” moment or how you feel when you find out the truth is hard to describe, so I didn’t want to be super literal. Then I thought, ‘what if I take the source of light away and have what’s left behind — the light itself.’ It morphed from super literal to more abstract and I always had this spotlight idea, but where it changed was how literal I was with it.  

 

The poster features a quote from Shakespeare. Why did you choose this quote and how does it bring the design together? 

I knew from the beginning that I wanted to incorporate some type of quote into this project because I feel like a quote can really help you get your point across. 

I chose a Shakespeare quote because I wanted to pick a prominent figure in the academic realm, someone who we learn about in school, and we learn about William Shakespeare and his plays. Then, I looked up to see if he had any quotes where he had written about light and truth and I stumbled across that quote. I thought it made my piece come together. I mean, the quote is, "I will find where the truth is hid, though it were hid indeed within the centre.” I thought that was perfect for my poster which is trying to represent that moment of finding out the truth, but in a visual way.  I thought it tied things together pretty nicely and also represented what Themester does in having classes to educate people around a theme.