By Sophia Schindler
First-year student Ari Eastman designed the TEDxBellarmineU sign for the sixth annual event that took place on March 15.
Eastman is the first student to design the artwork for the sign.
Associate professor of communication Dr. Shawn Apostel said, “In the past we have had professors and instructors design the sign, but this year we were introduced to Ari and were really impressed with the [Eastman’s] portfolio.”
Apostel said TEDxBellarmineU is one of few TEDx’s that change the inside of the sign every year to fit with the theme. This year, the theme is community resilience.
“Theme is important,” Apostel said. “And how do you reflect that theme inside a TED sign?”
Eastman said they created three drafts of their artwork, all designed digitally, that incorporated aspects of Bellarmine’s campus and Kentucky. When Eastman heard the theme was community resilience, they said it was “perfect” for what they wanted to do.
Apostel said the sign is amazing. “It has a lot of energy, and I think it really works with our theme,” Apostel said.
The Friday before spring break, Eastman worked with art professor Michael Kopp to transfer his printed artwork into the sign.
Eastman and Apostel deconstruct the TEDx sign.
“We worked from 11 to 8 to get the sign up,” Eastman said. “The biggest challenge was definitely the E and the D.”
Eastman said they used stencils of the letters to transfer their artwork. They used foam core as backing for the letters and used adhesive spray to put it all together.
“Something I say a lot is that graphic design is a global language,” Eastman said. “When you get this iconography no matter where you are from you kind of recognize that.”
Eastman said the sign includes elements of Bellarmine like the arch, Centro, the belltower, and the church. Eastman said when you look at the sign, you can see the Big Four Bridge connect in all the letters.
“A lot of artwork I do involves building and infrastructure,” Eastman said. “A big thing was kind of like, ‘What is iconography for people to engage with community?’”
Ryan Kleine-Kracht, a core member of the TEDxBellarmineU team, said it was great to get a student to work on the sign.
“We’ve really tried to get students to create the event and be more involved,” Kleine-Kracht said. “It’s so great to tie in the art department because that’s a big part of TED.”
Kleine-Kracht said he enjoyed seeing Eastman’s process of creating their design and implementing pieces of Bellarmine in the artwork.
The Fishbowl window features the finished 2024 TEDxBellarmineU sign.
Eastman said they plan to work on a new sign design for next year’s event. They said they potentially want to work with TEDxBellarmineU and the art department as a whole to clean the inside of the sign and get funding to repair the wooden sign after this year’s event.
“Two ideas were that we’d have the gallery for people to submit art that made sense with the TEDx theme, whatever that may be, or a gallery for my artwork,” Eastman said.
If you are interested in seeing more of Eastman’s work, you can visit their website. They are also on multiple social media platforms which you can find on their Linktree.
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