American Institute of Graphic Artists
AIGA Maine Poster Show
Exhibit Location: Cyr Gallery
Meet the Artist: Thursday, October 8 | 6:00-7:00 pm
Notes: AIGA’s artwork is not for sale.
About AIGA
AIGA advances design as a professional craft, strategic advantage and vital cultural force. As the largest community of design advocates, we bring together practitioners, enthusiasts, and patrons to amplify the voice of design and create the vision for a collective future. We define global standards and ethical practices, guide design education, enhance professional development, and make powerful tools and resources accessible to all.
Our mission is to foster a thriving, inclusive design community in Maine. Through inspiring programming and connection, we help Maine’s creative professionals, students, and educators build skills, expand networks, and pursue meaningful, sustainable careers in design.
About the 2026 Poster Show
The AIGA Maine Poster Show returns in 2026 with a new theme: Language. Each year, all designers, illustrators, and artists (including students, professionals, and hobbyists) from across Maine and beyond are invited to explore a shared concept through poster design. The resulting work highlights the range of ideas, voices, and visual approaches within our creative community.
Seventy-five poster designs were submitted by our community, of which 30 were selected for this year’s exhibition and will travel across the state throughout 2026.
We’re honored to have this year’s submissions juried by Amy Hausmann, Executive Director of the Maine Arts Commission. Selected posters will be printed, framed, and displayed in public venues in Portland, Bar Harbor, and Bangor, with free opening receptions welcoming the community to experience the work and meet fellow creatives.
Taken together, these posters explore language as words on a page and as sound, symbol, gesture, memory, and belonging. Some designers lean into typography, using bold, expressive letterforms that stretch, layer, fragment, and shout, while others translate language into image: a bird carrying the words “You Belong,” a heart mapped with handwritten text, a quirky forest path spelling out “UPTA CAMP,” a delicate handmade paper sculpture, or a constellation of icons that reminds us listening can take many forms. Across the exhibition, language shows up in multiple alphabets, dialects, and visual codes: Arabic and Hebrew, phonetic spellings, data-like grids, collage, handmade marks, and quiet poetic statements. These varied approaches invite us to slow down, to decipher and decode, and to consider how meaning is shaped by culture, identity, and experience. The posters of er a vivid, layered portrait of Maine’s design community today. The work responds to this moment and to the shared experience of living in this place, reminding us how language can connect and challenge us, help us be heard, and teach us how to listen.
—Amy Hausman, Judge
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