Art History Poster | Olivia Jaschen

Art History Poster © Olivia Jaschen (2015)

Above Poster by Olivia Jaschen, graphic design student, Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa (2015), announcing a Call for Papers for the 5th Annual Art History Symposium at the same school on April 10, 2015.

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Lady Dorothy Nevill—

Guinea pig, there's a tasty dish for you, but it was always a job to make your cook do it. They want bakin' same as the gypsies serve the hedgehogs. I tried eatin' donkey too, but I had to stop that, for it made me stink.

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Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers—

Miss Bolo rose from the table considerably agitated, and went straight home, in a flood of tears and a sedan chair.

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Anon—

I'm not an actor. I just play one on tv.

Art History Poster | Turner Kopecky

Art History Poster © Turner Kopecky (2015)

Above Poster by Turner Kopecky, graphic design student, Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa (2015), announcing a Call for Papers for the 5th Annual Art History Symposium at the same school on April 10, 2015.

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Margaret Geller, interviewed in Joan Evelyn Ames, Mastery: Interviews with 30 Remarkable People. Portland OR: Rudra Press, 1997, p. 90—

When students ask me about training to be a scientist, I tell them to read broadly, not just in science. It's important because I believe that creativity really comes from a broad education. You can be technically skilled, but the ability to make connections requires borrowing and reformulating ideas from other places.

Typographic Poster | Erin Keiser

Typographic Poster © Erin Keiser (2015)

Above Poster by Erin Keiser, graphic design student, Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa (2015), in celebration of printer Claude Garamond and the typeface that now bears his name, Garamond.

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Robert MacNeil, Wordstruck: A Memoir. New York: Viking, 1989, p. 109—

A painter's eye memorizes, as does a musician's ear. The memory-banks they create are fundamental to their training. Memorizing poems gives all of us, amateurs of language, our own memory-banks. Sentimental, lyric, narrative, adventurous, dramatic, bombastic, gothic, facetious, satiric—we heap the phrases up and our amazing brains keep them ready to leap out, bidden or unbidden—all accessible—in milliseconds.

Bald Eagles Galore Right Here in River City

Photo © Mary Snyder Behrens (2015)

Above We live on a small five-acre "farm" in northeast Iowa, with the nearest river about 15 miles away. Yet, we have bald eagles almost daily now, perched in the trees along our back property line, away from the road. One per day is common, but for the past several days, we've had three at a time (mature, with white heads), sitting atop the trees all day, and sometimes throughout the night. Here's one, photographed from the moving car, which was feeding on a rabbit in a ditch beside the road. About 90 minutes northeast of here, in Decorah IA, is a popular online "eagle cam."

Typography Poster | Jordan Deutmeyer

Typography Poster © Jordan Deutmeyer (2015)

Above Poster by Jordan Deutmeyer, graphic design student, Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa (2015), in celebration of type designer Aldo Novarese and his design of the typeface Eurostile.

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Leslie (Les) Dawson Jr, The Malady Lingers On and Other Great Groaners. Arrow Books, 1982—

The policeman led the accused into the dock and the prisoner bowed his head as the judge thundered to him: "Is this the first time you've been up before me!" The accused shrugged his shoulders and replied: "I don't know…what time do you normally get up?"

Vesterheim Talk on Mid-Century Modernism

Vesterheim Museum talk (Decorah IA)

Above Coming soon to the Vesterheim, The National Norwegian-American Museum & Heritage Center, in Decorah IA, at 2:00 pm on Sunday, March 29, 2015. Less Is More, More Or Less: The Roots of Mid-Century Modern Design, a richly illustrated talk by author and graphic designer Roy R. Behrens, Professor of Art and Distinguished Scholar at the University of Northern Iowa. More>>>

UNI Graphic Designer | Top 15 in Nation

Student Showcase, March-April 2015 issue of CA Magazine

Above Page 93 of the current issue (March-April 2015) of the California-based graphic design newsstand magazine, Communication Arts (CA) Magazine. It highlights the work of UNI graphic design student Aaron Van Fossen, who has been selected (in the words of the magazine's editors) as one of "the fifteen most promising design, photography and illustration students in visual communications programs from all across the country." Originally from Bettendorf IA, Aaron is pursuing a BA in Graphic Design in the Department of Art at the University of Northern Iowa, and will graduate in May 2015.

As shown by the examples reproduced above, some of the projects undertaken in the Department of Art's graphic design program are pro bono (free of charge), completed for the purpose of enriching the quality of community life. Among the featured works above are a poster for the UNI Department of Art's Annual Juried Student Art Exhibition; a poster promoting an annual event titled "An Afternoon with Frank Lloyd Wright" at Cedar Rock State Park, in Quasqueton IA; and a commemorative poster about Iowa-born Olympic wrestler Dan Gable, for an exhibition at the National Wrestling Museum Hall of Fame Dan Gable Museum, in Waterloo IA.

More of Aaron Van Fossen's recent work is featured online here.

See also: Roy R. Behrens, FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT and Mason City: Architectural Heart of the Prairie (2016).   

CD Portfolio Design | Stephanie Berry

CD Portfolio Package © Stephanie Berry (2014)

Above Design for a CD Portfolio package (inside and out) by Stephanie Berry, graphic design student, Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa (2014).

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Nancy Perkins, quoted in Remar Sutton and Mary Abbott Waite, eds., The Common Ground Book: A Circle of Friends. Latham NY: British American Publishing, 1992, p. 367—

Back around 1900, my father's family owned a large, prosperous farm outside Postville, Iowa. They lived modestly on the form but had plenty. Each summer they used to order about $500 worth of fireworks to put on a spectacular display for the county. And my dad's grandfather never went around without at least a couple of thousand dollars in his overalls.

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Buck Johnson, ibid., p. 371—

Mama had a saying she used when I wanted something. She'd say, "Well, honey, you can't get that. Like it says in the Bible, 'Blessed are they that want not, for they shall not be disappointed.'" Of course, it wasn't from the Bible at all; she made it up.

Art History Poster | Jordan Wolter

Art History Poster © Jordan Wolter (2015)

Above Poster by Jordan Wolter, graphic design student, Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa (2015), announcing a Call for Papers for the 5th Annual Art History Symposium at the same school on April 10, 2015.

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Jim Swann, quoted in Remar Sutton and Mary Abbott Waite, eds., The Common Ground Book: A Circle of Friends. Latham NY: British American Publishing, 1992, p. 32—

[My children and I] have a great game. It would be fun for grownups to do if they could let their hair down. The kids give me two animals and I make up a story. Of course they try to think of the most outrageous combination, like a cat and a roach, animals that will stump me.

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From the introduction to Archy & Mehitabel (a cockroach and a cat) at the Don Marquis website—

Archy is a cockroach with the soul of a poet, and Mehitabel is an alley cat with a celebrated past — she claims she was Cleopatra in a previous life. Together, cockroach and cat are the foundation of one of the most engaging collections of light poetry to come out of the twentieth century.

“expression is the need of my soul,” declares Archy, who labored as a free-verse poet in an earlier incarnation. At night, alone, he dives furiously on the keys of Don Marquis’ typewriter to describe a cockroach’s view of the world, rich with cynicism and humor. It’s difficult enough to operate the typewriter’s return bar to get a fresh line of paper; all of Archy’s dispatches are written lowercase, and without punctuation, because he is unable to hit both shift and letter keys to produce a capital letter.

Typographic Poster | Justin Allen

Typographic Poster © Justin Allen (2015)

Above Poster by Justin Allen, graphic design student, Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa (2015), in celebration of type designer Paul Renner and his design of the typeface Futura.

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Robert Motherwell—
I sometimes think of pictures as analogues to human relations. There is an interaction between the canvas and oneself, with many levels of feeling. Art is an experience, not an "object." If you look at a work as an object and find yourself noticing the machinery of it all, something is wrong. A picture is finished when you experience it vividly, when it makes you aware of the resonance and mystery of a realized expression.

Typographic Poster | Bailey Higgins

Typographic poster © Bailey Higgins (2015)

Above Poster by Bailey Higgins, graphic design student, Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa (2015), in celebration of type designer Paul Renner and his design of the typeface Futura.

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James Thurber—
I loathe the expression "What makes him tick"… A person not only ticks, he also chimes and strikes the hour, falls and breaks and has to be put together again, and sometimes stops like an electric clock in a thunderstorm.

Typographic Poster | Gina Hamer

Typographic poster © Gina Hamer (2015)

Above Poster by Gina Hamer, graphic design student, Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa (2015), in celebration of type designer Matthew Carter and his design of the typeface Verdana.

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Robert Motherwell, "The Universal Language of Children's Art and Modernism" in American Scholar 40 No 1 (Winter 1970), pp. 24-27—

…when my children were small, they used to think that the act of painting on my part consisted of squinting with one eye, with the other closed, and they would shriek with laughter, "Oh daddy, you are painting again!" as I would squint at a picture of the wall. What I was doing, of course, by squinting, was blurring the particulars in the painting as much as I could in order to see more clearly the emphases. So the children were not mistaken. I suppose that is why Goya, if he did as reputed, put on the finishing strokes of his canvas by candlelight.

Art History Poster | Shane Rumpza

Symposium Poster © Shane Rumpza (2015)

Above Poster by Shane Rumpza, graphic design student, Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa (2015), announcing a Call for Papers for the 5th Annual Art History Symposium at the same school on April 10, 2015.

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Sigmund Freud (Jokes and Their Relationship to the Unconscious)—

The bridegroom was most disagreeably surprised when the bride was introduced to him, and drew the broker to one side and whispered his remonstrances: "Why have you brought me here?" he asked reproachfully. "She's ugly and old, she squints and has bad teeth and bleary eyes…" "You needn't lower your voice," interrupted the broker, "she's deaf as well."