Minnesota State University Reporter

Issue date: 1/13/09 Section: Campus News

Media Credit: Raymond Starin Jeff Smith poses with several of the numerous posters he has designed for the MSU Theatre and Dance Department during the past year and a half.

Jeff Smith admits at first it was strange to see his work plastered everywhere. But now he's used to it. Minnesota State students are used to seeing his work, as well - most just don't know it's his.

That's because Smith is the creator of the MSU Department of Theatre & Dance posters, which advertise upcoming events, are displayed throughout Mankato, create a face for the department and its events - and sometime even spark a little controversy.

Smith has designed posters for everything from the classics ("Miss Saigon" and "Cats") to whimsical comedies ("Harvey") to the dark and disturbing ("How I Learned to Drive"). In the process he's picked up an award for poster design from the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival.

Smith's success isn't surprising, though, since designing the posters allows the senior to combine his two main interests: theatre (his major) and graphic design (his minor).

"You want to create something that people will see and enjoy or take a second look at," said Smith, who also does work for the Mankato Symphony Orchestra. "That's usually the goal. If they pass by and do a double take, that's what we want. We want the poster to draw people in and then they look at the information."

Smith created every poster for the theatre department's 2007-2008 season and is on his way to completing another season this semester. He landed the job after showing theatre department officials examples of his work at a time when the department was looking for an alternative to its old way of poster production.

"He brought some samples of what he had been doing and we recognized he had some strong skills in this area," said theatre public relations director Mike Lagerquist. "It's nice to work with someone who understands the concept of theatre … to take that opportunity and give it to a student who was also in the theatre department was very attractive to us."

Lagerquist and directors such as Paul Hustoles work closely with Smith to create the final product. Smith researches the plays and meets with the director of a play so the two can exchange initial ideas and the director can talk to Smith about his or her concept of the play.

"We'll talk about the play and we'll talk about the feeling of the play, the feeling that we want the audience to get from the play," said Hustoles, who as chair of the theatre department works more with Smith than perhaps anyone else.

Smith's task is to capture the feeling of each play in each poster, and do it in a way that's visually dynamic and presents information in an easy-to-read manner. He must take into account not only his own ideas and the director's ideas of how the poster should look, but also what's available for images.

Often he has to combine parts of various images, like he did for the "Bus Stop" poster, which placed second in poster design at the 2008 Kennedy Center theatre festival.

That poster features a bus stop sign positioned against an evening sky during a snowstorm. The original image of the bus stop sign, however, was taken on a clear afternoon. To come up with the final image, Smith had to combine and alter several different images.

"A lot of it is problem solving from there," said Smith about once he and the director have a concept in mind. "If I have a clear idea of what I want to do, I have to figure out how to do it."

Smith, Hustoles and Lagerquist each have their own favorite posters - and Smith has done close to 20 of them so far, meaning there are plenty to pick from - but Smith also has fond memories of his "Lysistrata" poster, which contained nude line figures and the words "Sex!" and "War!" Strategic parts of the figures were covered up, but much to Smith's amusement, a few local businesses refused to put the poster up and one publication declined to run a copy of it since they considered it too risqué.

His favorite, though? That happens to be his "Dog Sees God" poster.

"I really liked the show and I thought [the poster] was the most successful," he said. "It really captured the flavor of the humor of the play, and it told you exactly what the play was about."


Derek Wehrwein is the Reporter editor in chief

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