Technology Poster

This project was done in my GR 160 class, Digital Imaging. The MCC Office of Information Technology's department head, Mike Alstrom was really impressed by one of our previous class projects and noticed that the IT office's walls were looking pretty bare. He admired our creativity and spoke with our instructor about the possibility of us designing some posters for his department. The major topic we were given was (obviously) technology, but from there, we were allowed to interpret it as we wanted and come up with any concept we felt related to the subject of technology. As a prize for the best poster, a winner was to be chosen and awarded with an Ipod Touch. Pretty sweet.

I went to the local computer repair shop, Crashmasters Computer Repair, on Apple Ave. in Muskegon. I spoke with one of the workers and he allowed me to photograph some computers and various computer parts. I took 150 shots total. Not all of them turned out but with the best and most usable ones, I edited them in Adobe Photoshop CS4. I worked with the levels, curves, contrast, hues, saturation, clarity, and used a few other tricks which I'll keep secret for now. The poster size was 11 X 17" and in addition to optimizing, I also completely created this poster in Photoshop (a first for me...usually for poster design, I use Adobe Illustrator or sometimes Adobe InDesign).

I love working with computers. But, when it comes to any knowledge beyond using them for my job, I know little to absolutely nothing. This includes basic anatomy of a computer; I couldn't tell you for the life of me what the disassembled parts of computers that I photographed are. Its actually kind of embarassing how little I know about computers. I should probably know at least what the major components are but even after 3-4 various Intro to Computer classes, I still cannot carry on for more than a minutes worth of an intelligent conversation about computers.

This lack of knowledge leads to the concept development of my poster. I wanted to somehow express the parallel of computer knowledge I have and deal with everyday with what I am assuming the IT department deals with everyday. Sort of an oxymoron of computer knowledge? Kind of like my knowledge of how to use a computer at an advanced level on an everyday basis clashes with the IT department's knowledge of how to make a computer function at an advanced level for me to use. I wanted to show the complexity of computers (even some of the simplest components) and pair that imagery  with a quote about the irony of man vs. computers

I read through several quotation sites on the internet to help portray this concept and found a sort of timeless quote by B.F. Skinner from 1969. Im not saying by any means that 1969 was too terribly long ago, but compared to how far our technology has come since then, I think this quote is perfect.

Needless to say, I didn't win the Ipod Touch :( but, my poster was one of two honorable mentions.