Themester

IU alum Lauren Gronek returned as one of the designers in this year’s Themester poster series. Gronek graduated in May 2021 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design. She was a Themester 2019 photography intern and, as part of SOAD-S 452 BFA Graphic Design, designed a poster for Themester 2020 Democracy. In 2021, Lauren designed a complete poster series for Themester’s Resilience theme. Gronek currently works in Chicago as one of three designers in the marketing department of a consulting firm. Her work can be found on Instagram: @laurengronekdesign. 

 

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? 

I sort of took it from the lens of light and truth meaning the search for knowledge on a college campus, the importance of learning, and seeking the truth especially in today’s world which sometimes that’s hard to find. I wanted to capture the idea of searching for knowledge and also capture the idea of IU being a beacon of light and truth to Indiana and the world. 

Within the poster, ways that I tried to capture light and truth was I wanted to use the cutout of that student building because I feel that was a good, recognizable piece of imagery from the campus. I took that as a symbol and beacon of truth especially since the students of IU are some of the main people driving for the search of knowledge along with the professors and anyone academia.  

When I talked with Tracy [Themester’s staff coordinator] originally, we talked about how there is an eclipse coming up this coming school year in addition to the more metaphorical meaning of light and truth and what that means. There’s also more of a thorough sense of knowing there will be an actual eclipse and studying astronomical events, so I wanted to incorporate that and allude to the eclipse through the two circles in my poster. I wanted to still show that even though metaphorically, there might be a sun eclipsing with the moon, there will never be full darkness in this world, that there will still be light shining through because of people who search for it because you can find that light inwardly.  

Other little things that I wanted to show were some flowers because I also think that the idea of light can go into botany and how light is needed to grow. Begonias are the symbol of knowledge and frangipanis are historically part of the IU song, so those were little pieces of the poster that I tried to signify light and truth. 

 

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? 

I was all over the place with my inspiration which is why I went for a collage. It’s something that I like to do, and it’s a beautiful way of showing a lot of different ideas. 

I like using different imagery, different things that already exist, photography, graphics I already created, and intertwining them. I think that especially for this case, since I had so many different thoughts about how plants are given life by light and how there’s an eclipse, an astronomical event, as well as IU being this beacon, I wanted to combine that all in a collage.  

I did some research for a few days into the meaning of IU crest’s motto of light and truth. I thought about the theme what it meant to me. I started first looking at art history as well for visual reference and visual inspiration. I looked at the meaning of light and what it meant in [IU’s] history context, so some of those pictures in our history helped me. For example, in the illuminated manuscripts from the Middle Ages, they would use gold flakes to signify areas where you should look when you’re reading, so that's why I used the color gold because I wanted to signify that history of how people were reading illuminated manuscripts to gain knowledge and how that was the birth of books and reading things like that in a more widespread way.  

I looked at imagery from where light is used more prominently and just certain pieces of history that I remember light was the common theme. That helped me inform some of my imagery choices, how the lines worked, how there were spotlights coming out and pointing to different things – that was all based off of research into art history.  

I gathered my thoughts to come up with a way that a composition could include all those things and be something that is open to interpretation, but also have a cogent meaning that someone can catch without all those different topics combined.  

 

You have designed many of Themester’s previous posters in the past like in 2020 and even creating a whole poster series for Themester 2021. How has your style evolved and how do you tackle each of these themes differently? 

What I think is awesome is that every theme meant something to me. The beauty of Themester is someone can find something from every theme because there’s a broadness to it, but there’s a specificity to it as well.  

I really like each theme for different reasons. They all piqued my interests in different ways. There was one about Democracy and obviously the one about Resilience because I had worked in that field with the IU Environmental Resilience Institute, so that touched on certain areas of my interests.  

With Light and Truth, I felt like that it rang the bells of IU, the meaning of IU, and why I went there, so it was fun to deal with that even after going there, graduating, and now going back to why I went to IU, what my core beliefs are in learning and knowledge, and seeking truth in the world.  

I feel like [for] each [theme], I tacked those with different interests in mind and did lots of backed research to involve myself into the theme and involve myself as an artist and designer how I stand within that theme, so I could bring my own take on it which is the cool thing about these posters.  

Different people can bring in different views and hopefully, it resonates with anyone on campus from wherever discipline they’re in and they can find something from the theme.