The folks here are SITES are, well, diversified. We've got experts on just about everything from putting together 100+ object traveling exhibitions to writing press releases to developing and designing poster sets for mass distribution.
SITES' Director of Strategic Communications, Andrea Stevens, is our woman on the ground in the last catogory. She's been at the forefront of producing a cache of free, educational poster sets that are, in turn, distributed to thousands and thousands of teachers, librarians, and community leaders across the country. Her latest project tells the little-known but fascinating story of the Bracero Program--the largest guest worker collective in U.S. history. Between 1942 and 1964, millions of Mexican men came to the U.S. on short-term labor contracts.
It's an important story, so the posters--in both design and printing--had to be just right. Andrea spent a day in Baltimore recently at the HBP Whitmore Press, making sure that those 5,000 poster sets (totalling some 30,000 prints) were top notch.
If you thought that just pushing "print" was the final stroke, check out her notes from the field:
"The printing press we're using is a new Heidelberg XL 105. It can print six colors plus aqueous coating and can easily run 5,000 sheets in about 30 minutes. The Bittersweet Harvest posters were designed to fit two to a sheet for economical reasons, so the print job entailed three sets of press sheets.
Each poster is checked for color balance. Tim, the press man, constantly uses a "densitometer" to measure ink. [Try that one in your next "Words with Friends" game!]
We're shipping the posters to schools across the country now. Utimately, the posters are a portable teaching resource that offers historical context, asks big questions, challenges perceptions, tells powerful stories, and provides a platform which encourages dialogue and civic engagement."
For more information about our traveling exhibition related to this topic, visit SITES' Bracero exhibition page, or see the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History's Bracero Archives.
Check out the complete poster set too! The project received support from the Latino Initiatives Pool, administered by the Smithsonian Latino Center.
Well said, Ann!
Posted by: Heather Shelton | May 09, 2013 at 09:59 AM
The visual appeal of SITES's publication owes everything to Andrea Stevens and her positive and collaborative relationships with the area's best graphic designers and printers. I learned so much during the 7 years I worked with her.
Posted by: Ann carper | May 05, 2013 at 12:00 AM