I still have a lot of work to do if I want to develop as a graphic designer, but I’m learning more each year and I’m continuing to develop my style into something I feel comfortable with. The more I continue to work on projects, the more I realize that I’m very drawn to geometrical design, simple shapes and simple palettes.

I’ve also included some more refined drawings from my first-year drawing class. I haven’t had the opportunity to draw too much creatively since my foundation year, and I’m hoping to get back into it when I’m not so busy with assignments on the computer.

“Modernism’s attempt to build a better world with the aid of science and technology now seems almost heroic,”  and with the limited resources of a repressed Poland, artists and designers strained to express their artistic visions through the few mediums that were available. The growing popularity of poster design in developed nations like France (Art Nouveau) and Germany (Bauhaus) paved a more available and affordable path for Polish artists in a time when selling art to collectors was not an option. Photography, it seems, was not even a consideration for Polish poster designers, who instead used more traditional materials such as paint and ink, complete with hand-lettered blocks of text, to express themselves.

German occupation of Poland lasted until the end of World War II in 1945, with Poland losing more than six million citizens during the war, over six hundred thousand of which had died as a direct result of combat operations.  As a devastated Poland struggled to recover, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin over-took the nation in a fashion that Winston Churchill described as an “Iron Curtain” of control.  After promises of a free election for Poland with a failed attempt to follow, Stalin and company eventually fixed the polls with careful control in order to obtain desirable results.  For the next forty years, Poland would fall under oppressive Communist rule.

As Poland continued to struggle with its disheartening governmental regime, poster making emerged as a primary form of public expression. Similar in size to the adverts of modern New York City, the brightly colored posters of Warsaw were a direct contrast to its bleak and disheveled surroundings. The roots of Polish poster design were inspired by classic American film, a popular form of entertainment for the dispirited nation. Artists of Poland were commissioned to remake the American film propaganda by officials who thought the American versions difficult for a Polish nation to interpret. The commissioned artists agreed to remake the posters on the condition they be allowed to preserve their artistic freedom. For officials, this was acceptable so long as the artists agreed to respect the government’s traditional laws of censorship. This resulted in beautifully simplistic designs, rich in metaphor and visually striking, as the artists competed with one another as well as with their censors to produce high quality posters.

The following decades would witness the growing popularity of the Polish poster as something of a paradox, revealing highly individualistic approaches while still maintaining a communicative role, with its aesthetic spirit surviving “political attempts to control artistic expression.”  Polish posters would achieve increased notoriety, and Polish artists would push their limits in using metaphors to express a general distaste with the state of the Polish government. For decades artists would compete with one another in a sort of game, complying with government expectations in the first layer of their image while still trying to smuggle in some personal undertones.  What resulted was an affluence of aggressive anti-establishment propaganda, masked by the stories of American film. A famous poster of this era, designed by  for the film Police, depicts a noose running out of a man’s mouth, back into his ears and again out of his eyes, representing the popular phrase “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil”. Surprisingly, the poster raised no red flags and was approved immediately.

With Stalin’s death in 1953, Poland found itself with a new leader, Wladyslaw Gomulka. “Gomulka, a man who eight years earlier had been suspended from the party and jailed on Stalin’s orders as ‘a rightist nationalist deviationist,’”  again promised the nation significant changes. At first Poland rejoiced, welcoming Gomulka’s word as a signal of hope, but when Gomulka’s decision in 1968 to allow a national campaign against student activists ultimately evolved into a “a full-scale anti-Semitic campaign that sent most of Poland’s remaining Jews into flight,”  his reign as leader of Poland began to collapse. In 1970, Polish police killed scores of street protestors contesting the price of food , and Gomulka had no choice but to resign

It was fitting then that the second generation of Polish poster designers would find their true voice during Gomulka’s period of reign. Many believe the 1960′s to have marked the beginning of the Polish poster’s true impact in an increasingly frustrating environment.  This “second generation of artists” (those who found their beginnings during the communist period that followed the end of WWII), would later launch the highly influential Polish Poster School, built on their predecessors’ artistic instincts by creating posters that not only incorporated an individualistic style, but also played with a subjective form of expression. The posters being created during this era were no longer considered advertisements at all; they were art.

The reason for these artists’ success in conceptualizing posters as art instead of commercial propaganda can be at least partially attributed to the departments of the Polish government that commissioned the artists. Unlike the privatized businesses of the West, public forms of art and, more specifically, movie posters were commissioned by two central bodies in the Polish government: Film Polski (Polish Film) and Centrala Wynajmu Filmow – CWF (Movie Rentals Central). These two institutions were not concerned with the relation between the American films and their Polish poster counterparts. So long as the poster was not offensive in the eyes of the Polish government, the poster would be printed.

What came to follow would define Poland’s poster movement as a pivotal era in the nation’s historic and artistic timelines. The Graphic Arts Department at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts “divided its areas of instruction into fine arts, visual communications, applied arts, and poster art. It helped, thereby, to establish what is known as the Polish Poster School.”  As a result, the Polish community “began to regard poster design as an art form equal in importance to painting.”  Posters were no longer being commissioned for film only. Due to the Polish poster’s popularity, artists were now being hired to create posters for theatre events and the Polish circus (Cyrk). The generation of artists being commissioned for posters had now realized the power that came with their craft.

As Polish posters began to gain notoriety for their powerful anti-communistic connotations, the student activists of the 1968 protests and the workers who had been shot at in 1970 during Gomulka’s final months as leader joined together to form what would eventually become the Solidarność (Solidarity) movement. With the election of a Polish Pope in 1978, “nearly a third of the nation joined Solidarity and hundreds of thousands, mostly young workers, were emboldened to quit the Communist Party.”  In 1980, the movement would later grow into a trade union against communism and, in 1981, communist leader Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski would declare martial law in Poland.

“Can a self-organized society transform the political system of a state within the Soviet empire, by pressure from below, without violence?”  To say that the Solidarity movement was a revolution would be inaccurate; the Solidarity party never attempted to overthrow the old state power. Instead, the Solidarity movement and the Party-state existed side-by-side for over a year in what has been described as a “Dual Power.”   A traditionalist Polish government, growing tired and possibly afraid of the uprising, declared martial law in December of 1981 and banned Solidarity and other small organizations. Martial law would last officially until July of 1983, but many political prisoners of the period were not released until 1986.

Apart from restricting the civil liberties of the majority of Poland’s citizens (a curfew was invoked), martial law effectively pushed Polish poster design underground. Many artists were no longer free to express themselves through their artwork for fear of being arrested or killed. What resulted was something of a dark age in Polish poster design; the citizens of Poland who fought so hard to maintain their artistic freedom had inadvertently forced the government to disallow art altogether. Suddenly, the citizens of Poland were no longer concerned with anything other than the revision of their nation. As a Polish working class continued to fight for their rights, the Solidarity Party continued to build support for reform. American President Ronald Reagan’s public opposition to any further Soviet military involvement in the Eastern Bloc and widespread strikes by Polish workers in 1988 forced Jaruzelski and the Communist Party to begin official discussions with leaders of Solidarity.

What resulted from the series of “Round Table Talks” was the promise of semi-free elections in 1989 that would allow Solidarity members to run for one-third of the seats in the lower chamber of parliament. The other two thirds were to be reserved for candidates from the Communist Party and its two allied, completely subservient parties.  Again, the citizens of Poland would be faced with a doctored electoral process, no different than the elections following WWII. The difference, as time would soon tell, was the uprising of a Polish nation no longer content with complacency. The elections were held as scheduled, and members of the Solidarity Party were victorious in gaining every seat up for election. Furthermore, many Communist members did not even receive enough votes to maintain the seats that were given to them. After four decades of discontent, Poland had finally achieved their freedom.

In a fashion true to Polish tradition, the 1989 elections and the revival of the Solidarity Party can be directly related to a poster designed by Polish graphic designer Tomasz Sarnecki, just twenty-two years old. The head of the poster displays the Solidarność logo in bold, red type. The foot of the poster reads “W Samo Poludnie – 4 Czerwca 1989” (At High Noon – 4 June 1989). In the middle over a white background is American actor Gary Cooper, famous for his role in High Noon as a sheriff forced to take on a group of outlaws by himself. The photo of Cooper, in greyscale, has been modified to include a Polish ballot in his hand. On his chest is a red Solidarity badge. The simplicity of the poster powerfully accentuates the Polish cry for revolution. In 2004, former Solidarity leader Lech Wałęsa would write:

Under the headline “At High Noon” runs the red Solidarity banner and the date—June 4, 1989—of the poll. It was a simple but effective gimmick that, at the time, was misunderstood by the Communists. They, in fact, tried to ridicule the freedom movement in Poland as an invention of the “Wild” West, especially the U.S. But the poster had the opposite impact: Cowboys in Western clothes had become a powerful symbol for Poles. Cowboys fight for justice, fight against evil, and fight for freedom, both physical and spiritual. Solidarity trounced the Communists in that election, paving the way for a democratic government in Poland. It is always so touching when people bring this poster up to me to autograph it. They have cherished it for so many years and it has become the emblem of the battle that we all fought together.

 

For Poland, the desire for reform was undying and led to a free nation. The progression of the Polish poster evolved during these difficult decades, and ultimately found its end with the 1989 elections. As much of the free world was already dominated by commercial propaganda, a newly free Poland struggled to catch up economically. It is appropriate then that the end of Poland’s fight for political freedom can be iconicized so fittingly through the High Noon poster.

The first decade of the twenty-first century in America saw a similar struggle for governmental reform in the controversial presidency of George W. Bush. While nowhere near as oppressive as Poland’s Communist regime, the final years of Bush’s second term in America were filled with an American cry for change. A Democratic candidate in the form of Barack Obama symbolized this hope, and it was Shepard Fairey’s propaganda poster, appropriately titled Hope, that would ultimately come to symbolize this movement.

A postmodern society, so sure of itself in so many regards, continues to find its true voice with the modernist cry: “The reason for the sadness of this modern age and the men who live in it is that it looks for the truth in everything and finds it.” (Edmond and Jules De Goncourt, 1822-1896).

This technique will work for mostly everything on Craigslist, but I’m going to focus on using it for job hunts. The reason behind this is simple: Looking for jobs can be extremely time-consuming. We can all thank the wonderful internet for not having to browse through newspaper classifieds anymore, but hunting down a decent job on Craigslist can feel just as frustrating. Why not spend a couple minutes setting up your Google Reader to follow the sections of Craigslist that you check often? Aside from being a more convenient and dynamic way to look for jobs, this technique will make your job search faster.

The Concept

Navigate to Craigslist and find a section of the classifieds that interests you. In this instance, we’ll be browsing New York City for jobs in the Art/Media/Design section (http://newyork.craigslist.org/med/). At the bottom of the page is a link for the page’s RSS feed.

How do we use this RSS link in Google Reader? For the sake of consistency, I’ll assume the easiest way to do this is to copy the URL of the RSS feed (right-click the link and copy the link address to your clipboard) and paste it into Google Reader manually.

Once logged into your Google account, navigate to Google Reader (http://reader.google.com/) and find the “Add a Subscription” button in the top left. After you click on it and paste the URL of the Craigslist RSS feed, click Add to finalize the process. As a result, you will have just subscribed to receive future updates for New York City’s Art/Media/Design section. Neat!

Why use Google Reader?

I’ve already mentioned that this will make your job search easier to manage and much faster, but if, for some odd reason, that isn’t enough to get you on board, here is a list of other reasons to use Google Reader to manage your Craigslist browsing:

1. Starring Potential Jobs – Have you ever wanted to save a job posting from Craigslist to look over at another time? How exactly do you do this? When browsing a newspaper for jobs, circling a prospect with a red magic marker will work just fine. If you’re using Google Reader, you can Star a post so you don’t have to go back and look for it later. At any time, you can sort your Reader to display all items you’ve starred. When you’re done with a post, you can just un-star it and let it blend back into the rest of the postings.
2. Browsing Jobs on Your Smartphone – Last I checked, eight hundred billion people in this universe owned a smartphone. Browsing the internet at the doctor’s office? Why not check out Google Reader for a minute and see if there’s any new job postings that interest you? Reader is formatted extremely well for nearly every type of smartphone, and checking for updates takes about the same time as checking your email. If you don’t plan to read through any job postings on your phone, you can at least star the postings that jump out at you so you can browse them on your computer at a later time.
3. Know What You’ve Already Read – For some, the differences in link color (blue for unread, purple for read) on the Craigslist website will do this job just fine. But for people who are browsing on a public computer, or for those of us who delete our cache, cookies, etc. very frequently, a page of twenty postings can be very hard on the eyes and the mind. Google Reader differentiates between read and unread content based on your Google account, so if you log in on multiple machines your history will be consistent.
4. Search Multiple Sections at Once – We’ve already discussed how to add a section of Craigslist to Google Reader, but what if you want to add multiple sections to Reader so you can stay current with different categories? The solution is simple: add each RSS feed to Reader, and then group the categories into a single folder. Now, when you click on the folder you will have a single list of multiple sections from Craigslist. If you ever want to browse a section individually, you can expand the folder and click on the category you want to browse.

Making It a Habit

To some degree, we are all creatures of habit. Changing the way you do something on the internet can be an uncomfortable process, but I can guarantee that this method of browsing Craigslist is worth the change. Not only will this trick improve the speed of your job hunt, but it will organize it too. A more manageable job search means you won’t be cringing every time you decide to sit down and look at Craigslist. You’ll be seeing more jobs per hour, which will lead to finding more quality jobs.

The worst thing anyone can do is settle for an available, mediocre job because they don’t want to look for jobs anymore. Use Google Reader to browse Craigslist for jobs (or any site for jobs, really – I also use it to check Grain Edit Jobs) and you will find your job hunt to be less painful. It’ll be less painful on the eyes in the sense that Google Reader is very aesthetically pleasing and easy to use while Craigslist is organized like the back page of a trashy magazine. It’ll be less painful on the mind because you won’t be starting from scratch every time you begin your search; with Google Reader, you’ll essentially always be picking up exactly where you left off. Job hunting doesn’t have to be a pain at all, so switch to this method and go get the job you deserve!

Relevant:

• About Craigslist RSS
• Google Reader Help

Our quest begins at the gate of Hell. The gate’s inscription is indecipherable: someone has written “JUDAS PRIEST” over it in red spray paint. As we enter, we visit the Uncommitted, largely composed of contemporary artists and abstract filmmakers. The souls here are souls of people who in life did nothing, neither for good nor evil. They wander the outskirts of Hell, arguing with one another about why their work is relevant. They are punished as none of the Uncommitted cares to listen about another soul’s body of work; they are too busy explaining why their work is more important.

We fall asleep on the boat that takes us to Hell. Our time with the Uncommitted was spent imbibing in free wine and cheese plates, and we need to rest for our journey. When we awake we are in Hell, and we encounter an extremely intimidating mass of people. The sky is overcast and the ground is muddy. The only place to go to the bathroom is in a porta-potty or behind a porta-potty.

Cormac McCarthy informs me that we are in the first circle of Hell, home to the unbaptized and the virtuous pagans. Although they were not sinful during life, they rejected the idea of Christ. The souls trapped in Limbo chose to find meaning in life at music festivals, and are now stuck listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd at a festival in Hell, living in tents and always wondering if it is going to rain. Also, nobody can use their cell phone because there is no reception in Hell.

The second circle of Hell is home to the souls condemned for Lust. These souls, who spent their life making women feel uncomfortable on the subway and at bars, are forced to watch internet pornography videos that are constantly buffering. There are no walls in the second circle, and the large room is brightly lit with fluorescent bulbs.

Our journey through the following circles of Hell expose us to the horrors of Hell that await for the wicked. In the fifth circle, the souls guilty of wrath and sullenness during their life lie in the swamp-like water of the river Styx, composed entirely of the band’s sweat from their live performances.

The sixth circle, reserved for those guilty of heresy, is filled with televangelists and street corner prophets. Their emotions are perpetually mixed between frustration (because nobody will listen) and anger (because nobody will buy their literature).

The seventh circle of Hell is for the violent, separated into three rings. The inner ring keeps those violent against God. The middle ring houses the suicides. The outer ring houses those violent to people or property, and also contains those guilty of animal cruelty, who hang by their feet in a refrigerator and are covered in infected cat scratches. They will spend eternity hanging upside-down, covered in salt and licked by cows forever.

Those guilty of fraud during their life are sentenced to the eighth circle of Hell. The circle is separated into ten ditches of stone. In the first ditch, pimps are forced to wear normal clothes and work as accountants. It is here that Cormac McCarthy and I see Rudy Ray Moore, famous for his role in Dolemite. Moore stops us to explain that he actually spent most of his life as a comedian and an actor, but he was so good that people stubbornly believed he was a pimp until he died.

The second ditch is home to the flatterers, who are forced to live in a smelly bachelor’s pad together. They carry around a copy of Neil Strauss’ The Game, and will spend eternity arguing about the most effective psychological procedure to use when seducing women. Unlike the lustful sinners of the second circle who were truthful in their compliments and rarely successful in their attempts, these sinners have slept with numerous women, have been dumped multiple times, and do not feel guilty. The only women in the second ditch are prostitutes with genital infections.

The remaining stone ditches house an assortment of fraudulent souls, from L. Ron Hubbard and Aleister Crowley to Bernie Madoff. The final Bolgia is home for various sorts of falsifiers (alchemists, counterfeiters, perjurers, and impersonators), who are a “disease” on society and are themselves afflicted with different types of diseases. In an abandoned recording studio that houses nobody but the members of Milli Vanilli, the two members, stricken with a sore throat, live in a bunk bed and are only allowed to eat money.

The ninth and final circle of Hell is for the betrayers, separated into four rounds to distinguish the varying types of betrayal. In round one is Dexter, who killed his murderous brother at the end of the first season (oops – spoiler). The second round houses the souls of many actors and musicians who falsely represented themselves as natives of foreign countries for personal gain (Madonna is found here, speaking only in a British accent). Round three is for those who betrayed their guests; the punishment for this is more severe because the relationship between host and guest is seen as voluntary. The fourth round is for the souls who betrayed God. They are entirely frozen, stuck in distorted positions and unable to speak.

In the very center of Hell, condemned for committing the ultimate sin, is Oprah Winfrey. Oprah is described as a giant, terrifying beast with three faces, one red, one black, and one a pale yellow. Oprah is waist deep in ice, weeping tears from her six eyes, and beating her six wings as if trying to escape, although the icy wind that emanates only further ensures her imprisonment. What is seen here is a perverted trinity: Oprah is impotent, ignorant, and full of hate, in contrast to the all-powerful, all-knowing, and loving nature of God.

Together, Cormac McCarthy and I escape Hell by climbing down Oprah’s ragged fur, passing through the center of the Earth and ending back on the surface in Hong Kong. We talk about our journey over a cup of hot coffee, then debate health care reform.

RELEVANT:

• Wikipedia: The Inferno of Dante
• Google Books: The Divine Comedy – Inferno
• Oprah Winfrey interviews Cormac McCarthy