The task was to design a poster for the exhibition “CAMP X – Utting’s forgotten history” which was a high school project by local students, originally. From August 18, 1944 to May 8, 1945, the KZ “Kaufering X” was located in a small German town near Munich in Bavaria. For their project the local students did a lot of research, they interviewed a contemporary witness who suffered in that camp, and they compiled various kinds of information which eventually has been used for the exhibition.

I took the letter X from the exhibition’s title and made it the most dominant part of the poster in order to create a strong signal. The bold brush stroke style letter can be interpreted as a human-made mark that calls for remembrance of the atrocities of the Nazis, or as a symbol that stands for the marking of jewish people in the Third Reich, or even as a symbol for their murder. I chose yellow for the background color as a visual quote of the color that has been used for depictions of the Star of David in the Third Reich—it’s actually a bright neon yellow, this is to add another level of importance and currency to the message.

The bold and strong design of the poster drew a lot of attention, and has been noticed by many people. As a result the amount of visitors of the exhibition was quite high.