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Ivan Chermayeff

Ivan Chermayeff

Audio
Ivan Chermayeff
speaks on:

artists' understanding
the central idea

why the central idea
must be clear

connection between audience, poster, and idea



What's The Idea?

Posters persuade. Posters persuade you to buy, go, join, agree, vote, and much more. To do this effectively, posters must have a central idea. Ivan Chermayeff explains:

  • why the poster artist must understand the central idea (Audio 0:20),
  • why the central idea must be represented clearly (Audio 0:16), and
  • the connection between the audience, the poster, and the central idea (Audio 0:28).
What's the idea in these posters?

Sunmad RaisinsMuseum of ImmigrationThis Is The Enemy
Examine each poster and note the message communicated. Did the poster communicate a central idea effectively?

Discover more about Sun Mad Raisins, Visit the American Museum of Immigration, and This Is the Enemy. Since posters are designed to convey a central idea, looking at them is a good way to practice skills such as finding reasons and conclusions, uncovering assumptions, and determining the reliability of sources. Making posters involves brainstorming and creating metaphors.

Dr. David Perkins, codirector of Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, contends in his book The Intelligent Eye: Learning to Think by Looking at Art, that thoughtful looking at art provides an excellent environment for the development of thinking skills.

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