nothing says “i love you” like letting your girlfriend sharpie on your butt.

Thanks to everybody for all the feedback on Sunday’s post. I needed help, and you all steered me in a different direction — a better direction. I believe I have a final poster design.

But first, the story behind the poster. Hehe, behind.

I’m taking a graphic design history class as part of my MFA in graphic design coursework. My professor likes to joke around. That’s a huge understatement. Somehow he decided it would be funny to make a poster about an awkward dating experience, and that quickly became an option for the midterm: make a poster about an awkward dating experience OR take the test. Hmmm … which would you rather do?

The caveat is that the poster design has to be better than anything we’ve seen so far. Mine’s not, so I guess I fail and I’ll have to walk his dog and clean his toilets, but that’s beside the point. I decided on the poster because even though I’m probably spending the same amount or more time on it, I am working on a fun project that’s solely mine, and I never get to do that anymore.

So, my awkward dating experience? I knew you were curious. It’s one of my favorite stories.

Mark and I started dating 3ish years ago, but before that we were really close friends for about 3-4 years. So you can imagine when we started dating we thought we knew just about everything about each other. Except I didn’t know one kind of important thing about Mark that a girlfriend probably should know.

And I found out the hard way.

I came over to his place after a Halloween party about a week after we started dating. We decided I should spend the night. So I crawled into bed, and there it was. His bare ass! Mark sleeps naked.

He couldn’t believe I didn’t know. In fact, nobody believed I didn’t know that he slept naked. Because he advertised it VERY well so people wouldn’t end up in my shoes (or PJ slippers).

And that, my friends, is the basis of this poster project.

The first go round was a little too cutesy. It was missing the grit and the sheer embarrassment that I felt. Though, it did have kind of cute hair. But it looked like a brain and not a butt.

The new version captures the feeling so well. I have terrible lighting in my apartment, so I added some pixelation on top of the naturally occurring pixelation. I came up with this idea while walking over lunch yesterday and texted Mark. He was up for it (though we originally were going to draw on his butt — which we did, but that one didn’t make the final cut). In fact, Mark suggested I use lipstick instead of a marker to write the “except my girlfriend” part on his body. Needless to say I tossed that lipstick out. 

I hope that this is a winner. I’ve not done a photo-art directed poster like this before. I suck at photography so I usually just avoid it.

I’m still printing the first version of this poster just for our apartment because it’s pretty and cool-looking. I’m printing the new version on a skin-textured paper (think suede) because that will just add to it in a creepy way.

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Okay guys. Time to spill. Awkward dating experience (no nudity required!)?