The top image is a mood board that I assembled of Bauhaus images. Its sole purpose was to put me in the frame of mind for creating a poster that would represent the upcoming Modernism exhibit at the Corcoran College of Art. At the time I was a student in their design school and this was a project that the students in the Color Theory class had undertaken.

 

I was a film student many years before and was deeply influenced by German Expressionism. This reminded me of many movies I had seen as a film student including Metropolis. The look of the robot in that film is an iconic image that continues to shape my vision of the time and of the future. For the mood board, I saw these Bauhaus images as being part of the psyche of the robot...or at least of the people who had designed it.

 

When it came time to design the poster, I thought of a silhouette of a robotic head. Robots seemed to represent a logical, systematic quality embedded in the Bauhaus work. The glasses were round like some of the kinds that were worn by the Bauhaus designers. And I saw the rays of light as being a sort of awakening or enlightenment that was emerging from the darkness. The exclamation point stated that this wasn't just an accidental movement but instead a very deliberate stamp of authority they seeked to make in the design world. Unapologetic and daring. I wanted the poster to attempt to capture that quality.