BOOK REVIEW
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Teresa Sdralevich - Attention affiches by Teresa Sdralevich, published by and available from Teresa Sdralevich, Brussels (BE) (2014); 40 pages, 14 x 21 cm, numerous black&white illustrations; softcover; in french Teresa Sdralevich produced this small booklet for a poster workshop for children, that accompanied an exhibition of her posters. Despite its simple text and illustrations, all hand-drawn, it covers the essential aspects of poster history, design and production, and is a masterpiece of book design and visual communication. |
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Teresa Sdralevich is an internationally well known graphic designer, born in Italy and now living in Brussels; for a long time I was convinced that she is the only belgian contemporary graphic artist. She has a keen sense for posters on the streets: When I met her in Brussels in 2003, she was busy pasting about 800 posters that she had previously collected in the streets of Italy, all over Brussels. She told me that she enjoyed her mischief particularly when she observed how some belgians were obviously confused about the many italians operas that were suddenly performed that very day in Brussels, or so they thought. It would take a Dadaist to appreciate the full depth of this event, she kept it down to earth however and called it "cultural exchange", and learned a lot about poster pasting, and the short life of a poster out in the street, sometimes measured in hours before it is overpasted.
When Teresa had an exhibition of her work in Ath, Belgium, earlier this year, she combined it with a poster workshop for children to get them interested at a receptive age. Museum visits for children are becoming quite common now, and there are even professionals that are skilled in temporarily distracting the kids away from their smartphones. But writing a poster handbook for them that is at the same time amusing and on a high intellectual level is one big step further, as you see below. Even I am tempted to do the homework, answer the questions and design a poster. |
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