"Photography is a foreign language..."

I found this outside of the art room at Blake High School in Minneapolis:

"Photography is a foreign language everyone thinks he speaks" -Philip-Lorca diCorcia

Is he saying people THINK they are good at photography (or think they can "understand" photography) when they really don't? Is this a bit of an elitist take on amateur photographers? Is he talking about the proliferation of cameras in our society over the last few decades? Without knowing where diCorcia places his emphasis in that quote, I can't get a solid grasp of what he's trying to say, but I'm still intrigued...

Movie Poster Project

I teach a "pre-design" class at the University of Minnesota geared toward first-year graphic design majors. We cover basic design elements and principles, but then also discuss a lot about how designers can "control" how a viewer relates to imagery based on how it's communicated to them. It's part "2D Design" and part "Visual Conceptualization"... sort of.

After basically 1 type lecture and an hour intro to Adobe Illustrator, here are a few movie poster projects from this past semester:

Simple but effective from Gus.


Nice use of negative space by Kaemon.


Very photographic from Natalie.


And a good take on this documentary from Leah
(with the tag line pseudo hidden as a green line in the code).