the power of negative thinking.
In this project you will produce a series of posters that break the spell of toxic positivity, through a set of typographic failures.
1.
find texts that succinctly, poetically, absurdly express the ideology of positive thinking. look for “motivational content”. look for “positive journal encouraging shiny quotes”. look for stickers on amazon,com. for instance. dig deep if necessary. remember that the bravest thing you can be is yourself.
find 10 texts.
as you go, play attention to the affirmative typographic form that accompanies this content.
2
typeset your texts. experiment with typographic forms that cause the meaning of the affirmations to fail, subtly or dramatically or hilariously or murkily. you might take cues from the original typography.
3
read passages from Minima Moralia by Theodor Adorno and select some sentences whose content expresses, alternately, the power of negative thinking.
4
make typography for these sentences that dialectically exhibits opposite forms from the typography you developed for your affirmations.
5
from these sketches, make a series of 10 letter-size posters that alternate between the two types of texts to produce a sort of essay or ode to the power of negative thinking.
