Voting Visualized: Graphic Design Students Prepare for the Election

National award-winning graphic designer and Professor of Studio Arts Garland Kirkpatrick has prepared for the upcoming Presidential election by integrating vote campaigning into his curriculum. Kirkpatrick led his Visual Communication Design (ART 3660) students through the process of creating and printing voting graphics that visualize a range of contemporary political issues.

Visual Communication Design is an introduction to visual design for the purpose of delivering a message to an audience within a context. Kirkpatrick applied this core material to guide the process of designing voting graphics. The design process centered around identifying visual metaphors tied to voting. "The goal was to arrest attention, get buy-in and discover the visual metaphors that allow the audience to have a close identification with the subject matter," Kirkpatrick explains.

Students worked collaboratively to identify metaphors, and then independently created and printed their own posters based on them and the voting information they wanted to include. Junior studio arts major Sophia Chavez says: "Students prioritized establishing a hierarchy between the images and the informational aspect of the graphics, in order to inform viewers without overwhelming them."

The fact that the posters were physically printed was highly significant to the impact of the project. "We are so bombarded with cliches and digital advertisements that at some point we don't see them. Overcoming this over-saturation is a challenge. Doing this work in print makes it concrete and gets people offline," Kirkpatrick says.

A central goal was to foster honesty, despite the controversial, triggering nature of the political issues addressed by the graphics. "As a designer and artist, it is your priority to make work that is honest," explains junior studio arts major Jonah Dees. "Good design should be striking and should be something that makes people think."

Another central priority was to problem solve and create unity. "Design is a way of collectively visualizing a problem, so that we can solve it. If we can draw the world that we want to see, we can understand it in a way we couldn't by other means," Kirkpatrick explains. "Everyone has a story and an opportunity to portray their perspective, and we listen with reverence," he continues. "The more we can spread the message that we have more in common than we have separating us, the better our chances will be as a society…as human beings."

Kirkpatrick and his students are ready and willing to do the work to spread their message, especially as the November presidential election draws near. The voting graphics were critiqued at the Center for The Study of Political Graphics and are currently being circulated on and off LMU's campus.