Sarah Edmands Martin

DESIGNER

Associate Professor
University of Notre Dame

Designer, artist, and scholar working at the intersection of visual communication design, critical fabulation, and media aesthetics. 


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Recent News

UIC School of Design guest juror
m(other)ing exhibition open
forthcoming talk at Cornell





SARAHEDMANDS
SARAHEDMANDSMARTIN
SARAHEDMANDS


Posters

Poster design, illustration2008–present
Award winning poster designs for clients ranging from universities and museums to rock bands and non-for-profit organizations.
    





Concept


A selection of posters designed for a diverse range of clients, unified by a belief in the enduring relevance of print. Despite ongoing predictions that printed materials would fade in the digital era, the political poster—and the poster as a communicative form more broadly—remains vital. Historically and today, posters function as instruments of public address: disseminating ideas, shaping opinion, and mobilizing collective action across political, promotional, and educational contexts. As a medium for social change, the poster records our shared struggles—for justice, for peace, for environmental stewardship, and for liberation—persisting as a powerful visual tool in the public sphere. 



poster design
illustration
typesetting
layout design







Concept


Created for the Graphis International Designers for Peace poster collection, this work is a meditation on war's brutal inversion of reality. Inspired by Ukrainian philosopher Volodymyr Yermolenko, who at the time of this submission remains fighting in Kyiv, who writes: "A window is not a window. It's a danger. If your surroundings are shelled, glass can wound or kill you...Light is not light. Better switch it off after the sunset to avoid being turned into a target..." In this work, the window's shadow here doubles as both a sniper's crosshairs and nuclear blast shadow (a shadow scorched into materials by the blinding light of an atomic bomb).




won Honorable Mention award from Graphis
exhibited w/ International Designers for Peace 

















“Throughout time, posters stand as enduring reflections of the moment they were designed.”


Rick ValicentiDesign Director, Thirst
Graphis 2020 Poster Annual
 ISBN 9781931241816, pg. 12
To read more or check out the book here.
































































  




“The poster in all its forms has persisted as a vehicle for the public dissemination of ideas, information and opinion.”


Elizabeth ResnickProfessor Emeritus, Curator
 Graphic Advocacy2001–2012
To read more or check out the book here.



 







“I wind the spring and the public, in looking at the poster, will have that spring released in its mind.”

Abram GamesNick and Tessa Souter
The Illustration Handbook2012, pg. 203