Imagine RIT Poster
This poster was the winning entry in the 2019 Imagine RIT Poster Contest, chosen from 56 entries with 5,000 votes cast.
Imagine RIT is an annual festival celebrating the creativity and innovation of students. faculty, and staff at Rochester Institute of Technology. The event is open to the public, and hundreds of visitors experience the exhibitions, interactive demonstrations, and presentations. More information on the festival can be found at https://www.rit.edu/imagine/
The spirit of Imagine RIT is collaboration, so I wanted that to be a dominant element in my poster. The range of work at the festival is also vast, from engineers launching rockets to artists taking you through an interactive exhibition. The RIT tiger is also one, if not the, most recognizable symbol for RIT. Therefore, I tried to incorporate all of these elements into my poster, beginning with thumbnails and rough sketches.
My next step was developing the tiger that I wanted to use. Based on my sketches, I knew that I wanted it to look head-on. I looked at reference and developed my graphic
Once I had my tiger graphic, I used a projector to enlarge it and trace it onto a large piece of heavyweight paper. Then came the super fun part; I placed items that I had collected on top of the trace. These items ranged from art supplies to screws and Legos. All of the items represent an interest on display at Imagine.
Then, I took a photo of the tiger, which I brought into Photoshop to clean up.
After I brought my image into Illustrator, I realized that I needed to tweak my original composition. I worked on the computer to work out a new composition, but having no luck, I moved back to the sketchbook. By doing this, I finally landed on a composition.
I then translated this composition into a digital version. The addition of the extra drawn objects around the outside came at this stage.
Final Poster
The poster was displayed for advertising throughout campus and the local community. It was also handed out as a souvenir at the event and printed on T-shirts.
The hands symbolize collaboration, the items symbolize RIT student's various interests, and the tiger symbolizes RIT itself.
