On March 16, twenty posters created by students of the Professional Student Designers club were hung on the walls of the Cornette Library in a showcase of graphic design and literature coming together.

The show is called “Quotations” and the posters were inspired by quotes from the designers’ favorite novels or poems. The subjects of the posters vary wildly, from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling to Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.

The Professional Student Designers, or PSD, is a new graphic design organization that was created last spring. Kendra Barth, senior graphic design major, is the president of .psd.

“We wanted a theme that related to the library so we came up with the idea of illustrating literary quotes,” Barth said. “Using the library as a venue was to help graphic design students get their work out there as well as to show our fellow students what the graphic design department is about.”

Barth has two posters in the show. The first is based on the quote, “We live as we dream – alone,” and is from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.

“I wanted to convey loneliness but also maintain some dreaminess to it,” Barth said.

Her second poster is based on a quote from, Grendel, by John Gardner – “When I was a child I truly loved: Unthinking love as calm and deep as the North Sea. But I have lived, and now I do not sleep.”

“I relate to the quote a lot as I do miss the innocence of being a child,” Barth said.

Juleah Nusz, a senior graphic design major, is another designer who was featured in the show. Nusz also had two posters. The first was a quote taken from Bram Stoker’s Dracula: “The castle is a veritable prison, and I am a prisoner!”

“I thought it would be funny have a contrast between a serious situation in the book and the pixel art of the design,” Nunsz said. “I wanted it to look somewhat similar to a retro video game.”

Nusz’s second poster was based on the ending lines of Ayn Rand’s Anthem.

“The main character carves out the word EGO over the front door of his house,” Nusz said. “It’s significant because all throughout the book, he and everyone he knows… never acknowledge their individuality. By the end of the book, he does realize his individuality and that is why he carves the word. It is a realization of your own worth no matter what anyone else says about you.”

Jesse Melson is the Fine Arts and Humanities Graphic Designer and a graduate student studying Graphic Design. His poster was based on the line “Give me the splendid silent sun, with all his beams full-dazzling,” from Walt Whitman’s poem “Give Me the Splendid, Silent Sun”.

“[Whitman] is talking about giving up the city life and war and trading it in for solitude in nature. The second part is the opposite. He wants the city life and the excitement,” Melson said. “It really struck a chord in my life, being 24 years old and trying to figure out where I want to call home.”

The graphic design students often have displays on the walls of Mary Moody Northen Hall. There is an upcoming student/faculty show that will be held in the Amarillo art museum where work from the entire art department will be represented. The posters in the library will be displayed until May.