On Friday, Snyder Center came to life as the student body gathered for Phillips Academy’s annual club fair. Amongst the enthusiastic pitches and rhetorical questions trying to entice new students into joining clubs, another form of advertisement caught the eyes of many — posters. Here are some of the unique posters that captured our attention last Friday.
Henry He ’26 – Chess Club
“Our poster really embodies what we’re trying to do. We’re not a super serious club. We don’t have a whole lot of time commitments. It’s really just a space for people to hang out with their friends and to de-stress from school, and I think it’s a very fitting place to do that… As for poster making, it’s very fun. Especially for the newer members, it’s a great way for them to immediately feel like they are a part of the board and to see behind the scenes of what it takes to run a club. In that sense, it is a tradition.”
Caroline Weinmann ’27 – Rocketry Club/Big Blue Boom Crew
“We’re the PA Rocketry Club, or the Big Blue Boom Crew. Aurelia Zhang ’27 did the initial draft of our poster, but I colored it. This is mainly marker and acrylic, and most of the coloring is done in acrylic paint. The main thing is that we had to do the lettering first, but then we realized we didn’t like the background so we had to paint over it and redo the lettering. Our club designs and makes rockets for Rocketry Challenge, and we’re the only club on campus licensed to use explosives. We’ve got a pretty explosive vibe and the paint expresses that. We hope they feel excited and hyped up by all of the rockets and the fire we’re able to blaze in their hearts!”
Madalena Fernandez ’26 – Robotics Club (PARC)
“We wanted to have a very bluish theme that relates with our club and that shows robotics over the years. It took around two days to make our poster. We used mostly cardboard, and then we ended up using a bit of watercolor plus paint and markers. Someone from our club also 3D printed a gear that could spin which took a couple of hours, but overall, it was a pretty fast process. We really wanted to capture this idea of robotics, so we have a lot of pictures. We wanted something very welcoming and also something very engaging so that people could understand that we are a very hands-on club. I hope students were captivated by our poster, and that they got interested in joining our club.”
Magdalena Mercado ’26 – The Pariah
“[The poster we used is] an old poster, a poster [from] when we were first founded in 2022. We’re a creative writing and digital magazine. So obviously, we’re supposed to be very artsy and very cute. We have a bunch of little quotes and things just representing what we do and we want to showcase our creativity [on] our poster. I hope students feel invited into our space because we want to be a welcoming creative writing space for anyone to write.”
Erin Lee ’27 – The Philomathean Society
“We wanted to be very creative and eye-catching, but also very appealing as a club. We have a lot of pride in our history and the things we do, as well as the work we’ve upheld over all these years. [To create our poster,] Yara [Handschin ’27] and I sat down for a brainstorming session and we bounced around a bunch of ideas and drew a few drafts. Then we kind of settled on the framework structure of how we wanted it to look like. We added the key information for example, what we do, which is debating, and that we’re open to everyone, all levels, no previous experience required. We were just trying to communicate that as a club, we have a lot of fun and we work hard and that we’re a very strong family, Phamily!”
