POSTER DESIGN
School Project
2023
Software:
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Fresco
As the final project on Graphic Design course we were tasked with designing a poster on Urho Kekkonen, a prominent politician who served as the president of Finland from 1956 to 1982.
Known for his strong leadership and active foreign policy — particularly his efforts to maintain the neutrality of Finland during the Cold War —, his impact on Finland’s political landscape has been considered significant. Our challenge was to design a poster that would mirror how we as a younger generation see him and his legacy.
As Urho Kekkonen played a crucial role in shaping modern Finland, he is also a distinct cultural figure even today. His straightforward — sometimes described authoritarian — style of leading and his numerous sayings and anecdotes contributed to a larger-than-life image. Additionally, his ability to maintain Finland’s independence while navigating complex international politics has led to being a symbol of Finnish resilience and representation of stability and growth.
I first began sketching the poster by laying out whatever ideas popped into my mind, in small scale on a piece of notebook paper while limiting each sketch to a minute. Kekkonen is a recognizable figure due to his distinctive bald head, strong facial features and his signature glasses and I found myself repeating these as I have been strongly influenced by how he has been portrayed in pop culture. Even though my initial idea was to create his image by making a collage out of different materials, shapes and textures rather than just drawing an illustration, I felt like the end result would be a mere portrait with nothing else to say.
I dug deeper into research reading about his life, the political landscape of the time and what he was like as a political leader. I came across an article where he was compared to a conductor due to his diplomatic skills of managing relationships within not only the political parties of Finland but with the West and Soviet Union as well. This metaphor resonated with me and I knew playing around to visualize it would be something I would very much enjoy.
I narrowed my ideas for the poster down to three different options. The first — which I had sketched early on paper — features a rock that symbolizes not only Kekkonen’s strong leadership but also his policy of close co-operation with the Soviet Union while simultaneously strengthening ties with the West. Slightly inspired by the monthly posters of Helsinki dance club Post Bar, this design stands out by depicting Kekkonen through metaphors rather than his recognizable figure.
The second sketch combines my initial collage idea with the conductor metaphor. Instead of different shapes and textures, I used stock images and images from the Finnish Heritage Agency to symbolize Finland's national identity and Kekkonen’s relationships with the West and East. At this point I didn’t work on the typography so I wrote the text by hand as a placeholder. Even though I quite liked the rushed sketch, there was something that felt off.
The last idea depicts Kekkonen as a conductor in a ceremonial uniform, with strong backlighting casting his shadow in the shape of Finland, symbolizing authoritarianism. The repetitive phrase “Kekkonen, Kekkonen, Kekkonen…” could be depicted as music or chantings of a crowd. Although I hesitated going forward with the option — as I wanted to do something else than illustration — it felt the most potential as I found it most thought provoking and visually enticing. The poster is also very cinematic which is fitting as I have illustrated a lot of fanmade film posters in the past.
Work on the actual poster began in Adobe Illustrator as I vectorized my initial sketch, after which I digitally painted on some slight textures in Adobe Fresco before taking the illustration to Photoshop for further adjusting in terms of lighting, contrast, color and overall composition. This marked the first time I incorporated Adobe Fresco into my work flow, as in the past I’ve worked back and forth between Illustrator and Photoshop mostly.
To further create an impression of the text as music or chanting, I decided to try incorporating a staff — a set of horizontal lines upon which all the other musical symbols are placed — on which the text would serve as notes. I very much liked the curving line, the sense of movement and the dynamic it added into the poster but the letters didn’t align quite properly on the lines. Thus I turned the staff into what resembles a sash instead, but after receiving mixed feedback from my fellow classmates, I decided to give the staff another go; I kept the lines strictly horizontal to solve the text alignment issues. Although I experimented with placing the letters as notes and pitch changes, ultimately placing the text between the staffs to serve as lyrics was the right decision.
Although I had somewhat hesitated taking the idea further — having I’ve illustrated posters so many times in the past —, trusting my instinct as I found it the most potential one I had proved to be the right choice. The end result is something I’m proud of as I’m very pleased with my technical performance but above all, having successfully incorporated various meanings through imaginitive visualization.
The poster was chosen for display at campus exhibition Demo which took place May – June 2024.
