Themester

Elly Wagler is one of the designers in this year’s Themester poster series and also does work as a Themester design intern. Wagler will graduate in December 2024 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design. Her design work can be found online: https://ellwagle.myportfolio.com

 

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’m much more drawn to the truth part of IU’s motto more than I am the light part, but truth to me is the dictionary definition of it. Being honest, even if it’s the hard thing to do, it’s the right thing to do and I think honesty is a super important quality to have as a person and to have in your relationships. Light to me—my mind goes immediately to the dictionary definition of that too, like actual physical light, especially with this year’s theme revolving around the eclipse. Representationally, whenever I think of light, I think of positive feelings and with both of them, in terms of relationships, togetherness, it’s important to be honest and it’s important to try to shed light on things.

 

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 focused much more on the fact that the eclipse is happening next semester on April 8. I’ve always been inspired by midcentury modern designs, especially during the 1960s when the big space race happened and so a lot of atompunk, midcentury modern space art, kind of came from that so that’s what really drew me to make my poster. I knew immediately that if there was one era of graphic design that I wanted to focus on that has to do with space, it’s definitely that midcentury-modern atompunk design. So, that’s the inspiration I used to make the poster.

 

Were there any challenges you encountered when designing this poster? If so, what were they and how did you overcome them? 

Some challenges were just wanting to visually balance everything and make sure everything came across super clear like all the elements could be seen and they weren’t over-competing with each other. I had frequent check ins with Tracy and all the other design interns to get constant feedback like ‘is this working? Does it feel like there’s too much going on or competing?’ because I’ve always been drawn to make super detailed things with a lot of different visual elements. I’m more of a maximalist designer, but a challenge that comes with that is making sure you don’t have too many elements that are competing in your design.  

There was going to be a rocket on the poster, but at the end, we scrapped that because there was too many things to look at. I feel like a good piece of advice that I received just from being a graphic design major, most of my professors have told me the saying ‘kill your darlings’ which means you can’t be too emotionally attached to anything that you make because it might get in the way of you trying something new that you might even like better.  

If you’re too scared to start over, then you might not know what’s waiting for you at the end. You might never make an even better design if you’re too attached to this one.