A few years ago I ranted and raved in Print about a recurring and cloying conceit among designers. I’m talking about the one where a designer shows a reproduction of a poster or other printed piece in a portfolio by holding it from the sides, rather than photograph it flat on a copy board.
Okay, there’s nothing really wrong with it, and when first done, it was a nice change from the ordinary. But it became so widespread that the novelty wore off replaced by monotony.
Designer Joseph King took the cloying claw a step further by satirizing it in a project he refers to by the somewhat enigmatic title “Poster Cred,” which he’s currently attempting to fund further on Kickstarter. The project is based on adhering stickers of two grasping hands as seen in the images from his website here.
He told me “I came up with the idea a few years back to poke fun at the trend of designers holding their posters, and the fact that the way in which they photographed their work became more important, if not the focus than the work itself.”
He says that the name ‘Poster Cred’ might be too narrow, “as the same observation could be made about displaying print/book work, but the name seemed catchy and I went for it. I also think the way people photographed posters – standing up, holding it covering their body, became the most ubiquitous of all. As a designer, it’s also far too easy to poke fun at how we take ourselves so seriously. The goal of the project is that sticker installations bring focus to things that people might otherwise overlook.”
