Colorado State University Poster

This poster has been developed as part of my Colorado Vintage Travel Poster series. Created in Adobe Illustrator, I am able to enlarge and reduce the illustration without loss of quality.

I call this the “travel poster” look which is a simplistic graphic illustration style but with more gradations than the old world travel posters from the 1930’s and 40’s. The process: I first create rough sketches. Then I tighten up each part as a pencil sketch and scan the drawing into the computer. I then use this scan as an underlay importing it into Adobe Illustrator. Each part of the image is created as a shape and eventually I fill the shapes in with color. After the color palette is established, I then create simple gradations to allow the image to have some depth. This piece has been printed as a giclee on watercolor paper.

Colorado State University (also referred to as Colorado State and CSU) is a public research university located in Fort Collins, in the state of Colorado. The university is the state’s land grant university, and the flagship university of the Colorado State University System.

The current enrollment is approximately 32,236 students, including resident and non-resident instruction students and the University is planning on having 35,000 students by 2020. The university has approximately 1,540 faculty in eight colleges and 55 academic departments. Bachelor’s degrees are offered in 65 fields of study, with master’s degrees in 55 fields. Colorado State confers doctoral degrees in 40 fields of study, in addition to a professional degree in veterinary medicine.

CSU was founded as Colorado Agricultural College in 1870, six years before the Colorado Territory gained statehood. It was one of 68 land-grant colleges established under the Morrill Act of 1862. Doors opened to a freshman class of 1 student in 1879.

Over the years Colorado State University has had a few different mascots. In the early 1900s there was a black bear that served as the mascot until he was replaced by Peanuts the Bulldog in 1912. After Peanuts’ death, Glenn Morris, an alum of Colorado State University donated a different Bulldog named Gallant Defender to the University. The first ram to be mascot of Colorado State University was Buck, introduced in 1946. In 1946 an alumnus won a contest to name the mascot CAM, referring to the name of the school Colorado Agricultural and Mechanical College. CAM the Ram is a breed of sheep known as a Rambouillet sheep. The 22nd version of CAM was also a Rambouillet sheep. It made over 250 appearances and was retired in 2010 at the age of seven. CAM runs at the beginning and at half time during home football games. Currently, there are twelve Ram Handlers that take care of CAM the Ram. CAM the Ram (CAM 24) died on September 19, 2015, the day of the 2015 Rocky Mountain Showdown. The current CAM (CAM 25) is CAM 24’s half-brother and was 6 months old when he made his first appearance.