The Creative Forum of Nashville, Tennessee was a non-profit supporting the commercial arts: printers, paper companies, photographers, designers, and more. Every year they would host a big event called the Portfolio Show where students, professionals, vendors and the general public could gather to share work and make connections.
Widgets & Stone was given the honor of designing and printing the poster-mailer promoting the 2001 event. Given the collection of talent and skills represented at the show, we based the design on a theme of magic. We took phrases and visual styles from magic posters of the late 1800s and early 1900s as inspiration.
We were also able to add in a couple tricks, like making the poster side glow in the dark and adding a visual magic trick on one of the outside panels. Extremely stretched type, stacked on top of each other appears to be a mistake or an abstract symbol. But when turned to the eye at an extreme angle, the text becomes legible, revealing the message “You are cordially invited to the Portfolio Show.”
To top off the design production, the posters were letterpress printed in a limited edition run of 1000 at the Widgets & Stone studio. Mixing the glow-in-the-dark powder into the ink proved to be troublesome, but with persistence the team was able to get the full run delivered.
Design & Letterpress Printing: Paul Rustand.