Poetry Poster Final Draft

Posted on 2013/03/27 by Aria Hu

Around campus:
Wayne opted to put up the poster at two locations around Skiles which overlook the central courtyard. Having worked in Skiles almost daily for over a year now, I have had the opportunity to see the courtyard complete a full cycle through its seasons, from the bright green of spring to the dead branches of winter. I have also seen the longevity of papers posted up around Skiles, so it is my hope that at least one of the posters will survive long enough so that those who see them regularly will also see the changing of the seasons, especially the coming of autumn and winter as the leaves fall away.

Reflection on “Poetry Poster”

Posted on 2013/03/26 by Aria Hu

1. On the poetry poster project, we had two versions of first draft since we have very different ideas about how to make the poster. So Tianxiao and I designed a poster that is totally different from the final draft. The title of the poem is “Nothing Gold Can Stay” and the content of the poem mentioned nature, flower and leaf. So we focused on an natural expression of pass of time. We used a series of picture about how a couple change from the youth to their death, which is a kind of unavoidable and natural expression of pass of time. The final draft was a picture of combination of a real tree and a tree-looking bomb cloud. Its conception is much more eye-catching than the first draft done by Tianxiao and I. The combination of the tree and the bomb cloud showed the coexistence of beauty and destruction. At the first glance you might think it is just a picture of tree, but when you look closer, you find it’s actually a half tree and half bomb cloud. It is a astonishing design. We cut out the distracting trees behind the main tree and used the other side of the same tree in the first draft done by Wayne, Sophia and Caleb, so that it looked cleaner and more eye-catching than their first draft. We also adjusted the position of texts, added border to the word “GOLD”, and modulated color of the repeating word “LEAF” so that the texts fitted better in the background. The final draft is suitable for any kind of audience since the poster combined two kinds of most contrast things, the beauty and the destruction together, which is simple and emphsizes the theme of the poem.

2. When you firstly see our poster, you will think it is just a normal tree picture. But as you look at it carefully, you will realize that half of the picture is a huge bomb clous! Generally speaking, we used two pictures of contrast colors. The colored tree and the black-and-white bomb cloud not only caught the audience’ eyes but also emphsized the theme of the poster, “nothing gold can stay.” We did lots of photo shop to cover the distracting brances in the original tree picture. The branches in the original poster could confuse many audience. And the height of the tree and the bomb cloud was adjusted with care so that they look harmoneous. The golden leaf and the golded words “leaf” correlated with each other and their colors are match. By adjusting the text’s color, the audience see the word “Gold” and “Leaf” the first, which implied the content of the poem and poster.

3. When we were designing the poetry poster, we had two very different ideas and both seemed feasible. So we divided our group into two smaller parts and each part took charge of the display of one idea. Both parts provided a first draft. We compared the two drafts and chose one to continue working on with. The result turned out to be satisfying because we spent the same time but had two choices. And the colision of thoughts not only showed more interesting ideas but also inspired every group member to come up with important improvements to our final draft. I think I will choose to work independently at first and then combine each person’s work if we encounter an division in ideas while we work in groups. This process is worth repeating because it is efficient and really fruitful. Sometimes it just turns out to be that the result is different from anyone’s imagine and surprising.

Artifact #3: Poetry Poster Project ROUGH DRAFT

Posted on 2013/03/11 by Aria Hu

This is Caleb’s proposal.

Nothing Gold Can Stay
by Robert Frost

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

I think that this poem by Robert Frost would be an excellent choice for our group to do a poster about. It is one of Frost’s less famous poems, and I think it’s a shame that not very many people know about it. It is very short and simple, but delivers a powerful message about life. It is most definitely of literary merit, as many critics regard this as one of the greatest poems about the finite nature of life. It describes how fleeting life is, and that nothing lasts forever. I think that an effective way to portray this poem on a poster would be to use an image of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, which is mentioned in the poem. We could highlight the fall of man and how this perfect place was corrupted; nothing gold can stay. The audience for the poster would be anybody older than a child that can grasp the concept of life and death. It will most likely be college-age students. I want our poster to stop and make people think about what they are doing. Is it really worth using up precious time on something that will not last forever? Is it really worth ‘wasting’ time building up wealth and money here in this short life we live? I think that this poem really packs a punch and gives us the potential to really change the way somebody thinks. If we presented them effectively, we could do a series of posters about how there’s more important things in life than just money; family, friends, nature, helping others, etc. I just don’t want to waste our audience’s time with a feel- good poem that doesn’t have any lasting impression.

Frost, Robert. “Nothing Gold Can Stay.” The Poetry of Robert Frost edited by Edward Connery Lathem. The Academy of American Poets, 2013. 28 February 2013 <http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19977>.

Below are two rough drafts Tianxiao and I made.