April Greiman

strana)` · MoMA 39.2024 · LACMA M.2014.56 · Cooper Hewitt 1995-167-4 · author · PGDA both sides

1. What it is — issue 133 of Design Quarterly (Walker Art Center / MIT Press, editor Mildred Friedman) delivered as a two-sided folded poster in a paper sleeve 8.5 × 11 in. Measurements: the author 25.5 × 76.5 in (intended 33 × 76.5, cropped due to printing); MoMA 68.9 × 193.4 cm; LACMA 64.77 × 193.04 cm. Offset (MoMA "lithograph", LACMA "photolithograph"); George Rice & Sons — separations, assembly, printing; Ivy Hill — printing; Area Trade — folding. Front side one colour, cobalt blue on cream paper (LACMA description, confirmed against image); back side in colour ("atmospheric spatial video images" — modernism101, not seen). Typesetting: Mac + LaserWriter, eight sheets 8.5 × 11 joined by hand.
2. Composition — landscape format 1 : 2.8. A nude figure lies along the entire length (head left, feet right — when the poster is hung upright, the figure STANDS at life size). The body is not one scan but blocks: visible seams at the waist and thighs (Cooper Hewitt: "segmented at the waist and thighs") — these are the eight LaserWriter sheets, left as a cut. Lower left a spiral galaxy; along the bottom edge a dotted timeline with tiny captions (from the Big Bang to invention); on the right large bitmap letters and the caption "the spiritual double" beside a second, inverted head with open eyes (Cooper Hewitt: "upside-down head of another woman with open eyes"); on the right a blue rectangle with the Earth/Moon. The eye enters on the face (closed eyes), slides down the body, stops on the second head — two gazes, one asleep, the other looking. Everything else (arms holding objects, brain, diagrams) are fragments of varying size SCATTERED, with no grid — "floating".
3. Colour — one: cobalt blue. All tone comes from the density of the halftone (MacVision dither of a video capture: skin is fine grain, background empty). One colour is a printing decision (huge format) and an argument: the pixel doesn't need colour. The back side is in colour — two sides, two registers.
4. Typography — Mac bitmap typeface in two sizes: tiny text at 72 dpi (reads as texture) and enlarged letters (stretched in MacDraw — visible "jaggies"). The typeface name is not confirmed (class Chicago/Geneva). The title is not large on the front side — the message is the body, not the word.
5. Message — "Does it make sense?" — a question about the meaning of the new medium posed through the author's nude body: I am in the machine, the machine is in me. From five metres: a blue figure, one grain. From three seconds: the pixels are deliberate, not error.
6. Why exactly this way — the constraint is the Mac 512 K and the LaserWriter 8.5 × 11: the format CANNOT be made in a single file, so it was split; the resolution CANNOT be increased, so it was enlarged. Both constraints left visible (body blocks, jaggies). Friedman gives her an issue about her work; she refuses the survey and changes the format — because the format is what a new tool changes first.
7. What would kill it — a single move in Photoshop: a smoothed edge. As soon as the pixel becomes "clean", the poster is just a big photograph of a nude woman.

Principles: jeftina-tehnika-kao-jezik (low resolution as the medium's handwriting — the technique is cheap not in price but in pixel count) zrno-i-zamucenje-kao-oblik hibridna-slika-po-rezoluciji format-je-prva-odluka ekstremna-nesrazmjera-mjerila (a life-size figure against a palm-sized galaxy) To verify against the image: the back side (colours, text layout); the exact content of the timeline; which bitmap letter set "84"/"BA" is, upper right.

V&A O1176676 · slika

1. What it is — a "poster or folder", multicolour offset, 28 × 117 cm (V&A) — an extremely landscape band 1 : 4.2 that folds into a brochure. Client CalArts. Date V&A 1978 (Kutztown "1977" — no source). Both sign it.
2. Composition — a white hall in perspective (photo of the CalArts atrium) as a stage that runs the entire length; "inserted" into it are objects at the wrong scale: an enormous woman's face right of centre (photo, colour), a dancer in orange mid-leap, a piano at the bottom, polaroids, a pencil, an open book on the left, a young man on the right. Everything sits on diagonals and casts soft shadows on the hall floor — a collage acting as space. "CalArts" small, upper left, beside a red diagonal; along the bottom edge a row of small coloured squares (yellow, red, black — like registration marks). The eye enters on the face, then left into the hall, then scatters over the objects — deliberately without one focus.
3. Colour — the white hall as background, three solid colours (orange dancer, red diagonals, yellow accents) and colour photographs; there is no palette, there is photography.
4. Typography — small, in blocks along the edge, subordinate to the image; class cannot be confirmed from the small image.
5. Message — the school is a space that fits everything, at every scale. From five metres: a white tunnel with a face. From three seconds: a collage.
6. Why exactly this way — two authors, a photographer and a designer: the format is a band so that the photo of the hall would be LONG, and folding into a folder gives a sequence of panels.
7. What would kill it — aligning the objects to a grid. The disproportion and the shadow are the whole job.

Principles: ekstremna-nesrazmjera-mjerila lebdeca-ploha-baca-sjenu hibridna-slika-po-rezoluciji (photo of hall + colour portraits + flat planes) To verify against the image: the V&A photograph is small (folder on black velvet) — the typeface, text content, exact number of panels; who photographed the hall.

V&A O140223 · slika

1. What it is — a poster from the official LA 1984 series (commissioned 1981, printed 1982 — Wikipedia; V&A "printed 1982"), multicolour offset, 91.5 × 61 cm. Both sign it.
2. Composition — measured from the image, upright format: white border; pink field x 6–92 / y 12–68 %; within it a blue square of sky x 22–74 / y 22–62 %; from the square emerge bare legs in red shorts, the foot LANDING on a white "floor" below the field (foot y ≈ 71 %), with a cast shadow. Along the left and right edges of the field yellow-orange pastel strokes (airbrush/pastel). Lower left the Olympic "star in motion" logo, lower right the line "Los Angeles 1984 Olympic Games" (y ≈ 86 %). The eye enters on the red shorts (the only saturated colour), slides down the leg, stops on the foot and its shadow — that shadow is the whole trick: the figure has STEPPED OUT of the image onto the paper.
3. Colour — sky blue (a single photograph), pink and pastel yellow as atmosphere, red only on the shorts, mint below the horizon. Three floating planes of varying saturation — depth without perspective.
4. Typography — one line of grotesque at the bottom, small, in the role of a signature; class Helvetica — name not confirmed. The image is 95% of the poster.
5. Message — an athlete stepping out of the image into your space; LA light (pastel, sky). From five metres: a red dot and two legs. From three seconds: the shadow.
6. Why exactly this way — the official poster series calls for a legible sport without a face; Hofmann's body fragment (Stadttheater) carried into colour and into space. Airbrush and pastel are Odgers' register; "floating square + shadow" is hers.
7. What would kill it — removing the shadow under the foot: the legs would be back inside the photograph, not in front of it.

Principles: lebdeca-ploha-baca-sjenu ekstremna-nesrazmjera-mjerila (legs at human scale, sky square at window scale) providni-sloj-kao-dubina (pastel strokes OVER the pink, under the blue) To verify against the image: whether the pastel is printed as a separate colour or in process; who is the model; the exact year (1981 design / 1982 print).

upper half)` · LACMA M.2018.145.3.1 · Cooper Hewitt / Gildor · PGDA 738

1. What it is — poster for the Westweek symposium at the Pacific Design Center (PDC 2), Los Angeles, on collaboration between artists, designers and architects (Gildor). Five-colour offset (LACMA), 91.44 × 60.96 cm, delivered with 3-D glasses she made herself (Gildor). LACMA record has no image; PGDA image shows the upper half.
2. Composition — upper part: black band with a turquoise triangle and the logotype „P D C 2" (red small squares + a white one with a number); a yellow lightning-triangle enters diagonally; „Your Turn" and „My Turn" in two rows of large bold grotesque, on a slight diagonal (≈ 10°), each row DOUBLED — cyan and magenta offset — and on the right the same text mirrored and upside down („Your Turn" backwards). On the right a red halftone gradient with large numbers 3 8 3, bottom left Earth from space, scattered small numbers and stardust. The eye enters on „Your", is led by the diagonal and the colour shift.
3. Colour — cyan + magenta as a stereo pair (Gildor: „two superimposed images of the text, one in cyan and the other in magenta"); where they overlap, a third, dark violet; plus yellow, red, black. Colour here isn't hierarchy but OPTICS: without glasses it's vibration, with glasses depth („unstable layers, which spring from the surface").
4. Typography — „a conventional sans serif typeface" (Gildor) — bold grotesque, name not confirmed; all the unconventionality is in the doubling, the diagonal and the mirroring, not in the cut. Stretched/condensed letters and numbers work as space, not as text.
5. Message — „your turn, my turn": the two layers (cyan/magenta) are two interlocutors; the title becomes a demonstration of its theme. From five metres: red-blue flicker. From three seconds with the glasses on: the text pops out.
6. Why exactly this way — CalArts video equipment 1982–84 and stereo experiments; the symposium's theme is exchange, so the poster is built as an exchange between two channels.
7. What would kill it — aligning cyan and magenta into register: what's left is an ordinary bold diagonal title.

Principles: preklop-daje-trecu-boju (cyan × magenta = violet, and that is DEPTH, not just colour) providni-sloj-kao-dubina tekst-je-predmet-u-prostoru format-je-prva-odluka (poster + glasses) To verify against the image: the lower half; what it looks like through the glasses (impossible online); the five colours by name.

V&A O1176682 · slika

1. What it is — poster for the SCI-Arc lecture series (Southern California Institute of Architecture), multicolour offset, 91.5 × 61 cm; V&A: „Sci-Arc Changing Concepts poster". Same year as DQ 133 — first Mac works.
2. Composition — measured from the image: peach-orange dither gradient background at top, fading into white with scattered dots; central square x 18–78 / y 8–58 % — the Vitruvian Man as a WHITE BITMAP (coarse pixels) over a magenta → cyan gradient, framed by an orange grid of tiny characters; in the middle of the figure a small orange square with a PHOTOGRAPH (a winged classical fragment — sharp). Left, a column of small square photographs (x 5–14 / y 8–45 %) like a filmstrip; right, a list of speakers with black date bands (y 4–30 %). A blue plane x 18–78 / y 40–70 % below the square; on it „sci-arc" in yellow bitmap letters with a black outline, letterspaced, with a hyphen (y 52–60 %). Below, a white/peach rectangle x 30–60 / y 60–85 % with „changing / concepts of s p a c e / in architecture / and art" bold, „space" letterspaced. Small text bottom left in columns. The eye enters on the yellow „sci-arc", rises into the figure, falls to „space".
3. Colour — orange, magenta, cyan, yellow, black: process colours as LAYERS (gradients), not as flat fields. Each layer has its own resolution: fine dither of the background, coarse bitmap of the figure, continuous-tone photograph. Colour doesn't order the hierarchy — DEPTH does (what is in front).
4. Typography — the title is Mac bitmap enlarged to the visible pixel, yellow with a black outline to separate it from the cyan; subtitle bold grotesque/bitmap-bold; „space" letterspaced as an illustration of the word. Typeface names not confirmed.
5. Message — Leonardo's man as the measure of space, but made of pixels: „the changing concept of space" shown within the image itself. From five metres: a square with a gradient and a yellow name. From three seconds: the figure is made of squares.
6. Why exactly this way — the subject (space) demands depth; the Mac in 1986 gives only bitmap and gradient; the solution: stack five layers of different origin so each becomes another „plane" — depth without perspective (Cooper Hewitt: „the page as a three-dimensional space").
7. What would kill it — a single resolution for everything (vectorise Leonardo): the layers would merge into one flat plane and the space would disappear.

Principles: hijerarhija-po-dubini hibridna-slika-po-rezoluciji providni-sloj-kao-dubina zrno-i-zamucenje-kao-oblik (the dither gradient is the sky) To verify against the image: contents of the left filmstrip and the speaker list; what the photograph in the middle is (the Winged Victory of Samothrace? — not to be asserted).

MoMA 477.1987

1. What it is — poster for her lecture; offset, printer Art Litho. Co., Baltimore; MoMA 36 × 24 in (91.5 × 61 cm) — the image is landscape (842 × 563 px, whole with border), so it's likely 61 × 91.5 (h × w); client not in the record. Gift of the designer.
2. Composition — landscape format. Yellow field with white diagonal stripes (waves) across the whole surface; the title „Snow White + the Seven Pixels" in two rows of large bitmap serif (black), across the top third, with a large black „+" on the left; left edge: a vertical column of blue halftone dots (x 8–14 %) and next to it vertical rows of lecture text (red/blue); top right a red spiral mark (target); bottom right a white rectangle with a photograph of a wireframe sphere/globe (video still, x 58–75 / y 45–90 %) and a small black triangle (cursor/„play"). The eye enters on „Snow White", slides along the stripes to the globe.
3. Colour — yellow as the base (whole field), blue and red as halftone/line, black for the letterforms. The white stripes are „subtracted" yellow — a negative. Pop palette, but everything in halftones.
4. Typography — bitmap SERIF (a pixel Times class — not confirmed) in the title: Snow White (classic, serif) + pixels (bitmap) in one typeface — the title is a joke carried out typographically. Small text vertical, letterspaced.
5. Message — a fairy tale in seven pixels: the Mac in 1986 as Snow White in the dwarfs' house. From five metres: yellow with a black headline. From three seconds: the serif is made of squares.
6. Why exactly this way — a poster for a lecture about the Mac has to show the Mac: halftone, bitmap, video still, all on one sheet; yellow is LA sun and a Weingart trademark.
7. What would kill it — the title in a smooth Times.

Principles: jeftina-tehnika-kao-jezik hibridna-slika-po-rezoluciji (bitmap serif + halftone + video still) providni-sloj-kao-dubina (halftone over stripes) To verify against the image: place and date of the lecture from the vertical text; orientation (MoMA measurements against the image).

V&A O1176678 · LACMA M.2023.107.4 · PGDA 347 · slika

1. What it is — poster for the exhibition of Californian graphic design at the Museo Fortuny, Venice; V&A 98.5 × 68 cm, LACMA 98.74 × 68.1 cm; four-colour offset with fluorescent process colours (PGDA — the only source that says fluorescent); V&A and LACMA give "offset lithograph" (LACMA's image caption says "screenprint" — a description error, the record says offset). PGDA: "Location made: Italy".
2. Composition — portrait format. Yellow band across the top (y 0–8%) with a transition yellow → red along the right edge; the upper half a BLACK field, the lower a MAGENTA field, both punctured by the same white organic "clouds" (or holes) running diagonally down the format; right of centre a rectangular PHOTOGRAPH of a wave x 30–80 / y 40–62% — halftone/dither, in a transition from yellow-orange (left) → blue (right), so the wave's foam breaks down into dots; "Pacific" set stepped-diagonal across the black (y ≈ 30%) in white, torn bitmap serif; "1987" below in the same typeface; pink brushstrokes top right; small vertical text left of the photograph. The eye enters on the wave (the only photograph), then to "Pacific", then down the clouds to "1987".
3. Colour — black / magenta / yellow / white + blue only in the photograph. Fluorescent magenta (V&A description: "hot pink") gives LA light; black on top and magenta below is an inverted landscape (sky dark, ground light). The white clouds are the SAME shape across both fields — one layer punches through two fields: providni-sloj-kao-dubina without transparency, just by cutout.
4. Typography — "Pacific" and "1987": the lettering is deliberately damaged — bitmap enlarged and stretched (MacDraw stretch), edges torn like a raster; typeface name not confirmed (serif class). The title isn't legible from five metres — and that's intentional: the word behaves like a wave, not like a sign.
5. Message — California in Venice: wave, sun, fluorescent. From five metres: black/pink with white holes and a wave. From three seconds: the foam is made of pixels.
6. Why exactly this way — a design exhibition in a textile museum: the poster as fabric (repeated clouds, fluorescent) more than as advertisement; the Mac in 1987 gives a dither transition in the photograph — she puts it right into the wave itself, where the foam is already grain.
7. What would kill it — a clean title in Helvetica across the top: the piece would become a tourist poster.

Principles: zrno-i-zamucenje-kao-oblik (wave's foam = dither) tekst-je-predmet-u-prostoru providni-sloj-kao-dubina hibridna-slika-po-rezoluciji To verify against the image: which colours are fluorescent (PGDA doesn't say which); the content of the vertical text; whether "Pacific Wave" is the title of the exhibition or just of the poster (Eye/Kutztown don't say).

MoMA 40.2024 · PGDA 1314

1. What it is — poster for the Workspace 87 conference/trade show, Moscone Center, San Francisco, September 27 (from the image); client Charles Yourd, Workspace (PGDA); offset (MoMA "lithograph"), 91.4 × 61 cm; gift of the designer, 2024. PGDA: in "Design Excellence: 50 Posters of the 80s".
2. Composition — portrait. Red-and-white rays from a point on the left edge (x 0 / y 35%) spread across the whole format; red vertical stripes along the left and right edges; a green field (aerial photograph/lawn) trapezoid upper-right x 30–80 / y 10–30%; in the centre a tilted video-still of a city from above (black-and-white buildings) x 30–75 / y 22–80%; an eye (video-still) at x 40 / y 35%; a hand at bottom centre (y 78%); a 3-D blue chair/block (computer render, isometric) bottom right x 45–80 / y 60–90%; a yellow-green dither transition bottom left. Text: "Workspace 87" vertical in a black band top right (bitmap grotesque); "September 27" vertical in red; "Moscone Center San Francisco" vertical in a yellow band; three words OPPORTUNITY (yellow, diagonal ↗), CONFLICT (pink, vertical), SURVIVAL (along the chair leg, and mirrored). The eye enters on the eye, falls to the chair, reads the words along the way.
3. Colour — red rays + white as background (energy), green and yellow as fields, blue only on the 3-D object, the photograph black-and-white. Colour = origin of the layer: render blue, video grey, field green.
4. Typography — every word is an object: vertical, diagonal, mirrored, spaced; none of them is a "title at the top". Bitmap grotesque in the title, spaced grotesque in the words — names not confirmed.
5. Message — the workplace of the future: city from above, an eye that watches, a hand that works, a chair from a computer; the three words are the conference theme. From five metres: red rays and a blue chair. From three seconds: everything is flying.
6. Why exactly this way — 1987 already has 3-D render and video; she doesn't hide them, but gives each its own layer and its own angle — the poster is a catalogue of the media Workspace promises.
7. What would kill it — align the words horizontally and remove the rays: what's left is a collage.

Principles: hijerarhija-po-dubini (the chair in front of everything = the newest technique closest) hibridna-slika-po-rezoluciji (render + video + photo + dither) tekst-je-predmet-u-prostoru lebdeca-ploha-baca-sjenu (the chair and green field have a shadow/offset) To verify against the image: whether the green field is an aerial photo or flat; the full content of the words (SURVIVAL mirrored?); who Charles Yourd is.