“Environmental Design at Art Center College of Design”

"This poster for the Environmental Design department, produced in collaboration with Tara Carson, was intended to attract potential students to the program. Its dynamism pivots around the tornado-like element at center, which is composed of a variety of found and natural materials, reminiscent of a bird’s nest. Juxtaposed with the architectural models at the bottom left, these scrounged supplies hint at the program’s focus on blending nature and technology to create sustainable structures. To endow the poster with energy, Méndez and Carson relate all other elements of the composition to the twirling focal point, from the undulating headline, which emulates the revolving motion, to the colored planes and text passages, which gesture back towards the center. On the poster’s lively play with depth, Méndez explains, 'We created the typographic headline from one plane stretching almost beyond its capacity to make contact with another plane and be forever altered. In the tension created between the severity of an x and y axis grid and the ethereal depth of the z axis is where we hit formal design bliss.'[4] From its animated quality to its intimation of three-dimensionality, this poster exemplifies Méndez’s approach to revitalizing the Art Center College of Design’s brand, a look that she credits with shaping her own design identity as a then-emerging professional. The poster’s topic, moreover, parallels Méndez’s interest in the environment and the natural world, themes which animate her current design practice through her studio, Rebeca Méndez Design (fd. 1996), as well as her ongoing artistic ventures."—https://www.cooperhewitt.org/2018/10/15/in-the-eye-of-the-tornado-rethinking-the-limits-of-design-copy/