MOTIVATIONAL POSTER

We all have seen motivational posters (especially if you watch The Office) with self-help adages. They're blatant pieces of propaganda designed to propagate action for the self within a specific environment. We are supposed to be encouraged by an image. On one hand it is the satisfying recognition of the power of art and design. But on the other hand it is a forced way of manipulating ourselves vis-à-vis a visual substitution for a voice above us. Perhaps we should consider who is telling us to conceive, believe and achieve. The wall? The designer? Your boss? Your company? Your god? Your superego?

Or is it all a subconsciously accepted sham and therefore really just a pretty poster on the wall? So the better looking, the more motivating (i.e. the image above). Since we intellectually know it is a poster designed to motivate us, do we nod in acceptance and focus back on our present task? Or do we use it to justify our slacking?

Conceive, believe, and achieve. The design of the image above is decadently polished with the simple but strong color palette of medium blue, steel gray, black and white. Blue. It is one of the most popular colors for design, especially for banks and law firms. Psychologically, it conveys trust, which makes sense in the context of motivation. Visually, the blue in the design above is a particular shade of blue that does not saturate the eye's cones, but rather softly eases in to sit comfortably with the white and light silver. There are many hues of blue out there, however most blues we encounter are of the common medium-navy, ocean blue type (such as that of Blogger, the New York Knicks, NYPD -- the kind that looks atrocious when paired with orange). One theory on the pervasiveness of this particular blue is that it is close to the Crayola crayon blue that we all encounter in our first decade of life and therefore somehow feels "right."

The custom typography is that of a solid sans serif letter form with lines of equal weight; it is reminiscent of French enamel signs from the 1930s. The type has the feel of retro medicine drugstore bottle meets galactic space invaders, which are two opposites that posit old/antique with new/futuristic. This could make the poster work on a deeply subconscious level by easing our minds into a happy middle place found between that dichotomy.