4 elements/ 4 years/ 4 posters

Mail-Art exhibition poster series:

Over four consecutive years a gallery in Germany organised an international mail art exhibition each year. Artists from all over the globe were invited to create works of art that will be put through the postal system without further packaging to arrive at the exhibition. The pieces of mail themselves are the artworks, they are mail-art.

I was commissioned to come up with a concept of posters for each year of the 4-year cycle which was themed around the four elements Water, Fire, Earth and Air, and which would be mailed to all participating artists.

Due to the nature of the exhibition I felt the posters had to fulfill similar criteria as the submitted work, and become pieces of mail, postable without being enveloped by extra packaging before they were sent around the globe.

The chosen format is a slender half DIN A 1 lenghtwise, which offers a large looking poster at half the cost of DIN A1. When folded down in half several times it becomes DIN lang (DLE). This perfectly fit within German Post standard mail sizes and allowed to be posted at the fixed, standard rate. A small sticker around the open long aide kept the poster closed while in transit.

For design reasons and also to further reduce production costs I chose to use the 4 process colours (cyan, magenta, yellow and black) over the four years. Each year is using black plus one other vibrant process colour. Air uses black only but instead of just the paper white I chose a subtle beige for a nicer duotone.