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 double-sided fold-out poster in a paper sleeve 8.5 × 11 in. Measurements: the author states 25.5 × 76.5 in (originally intended 33 × 76.5, trimmed for printing); MoMA records 68.9 × 193.4 cm; LACMA 64.77 × 193.04 cm. The print is offset (MoMA "lithograph", LACMA "photolithograph"); George Rice & Sons does the separations, stripping and printing; Ivy Hill prints; Area Trade folds. The front is in a single colour, cobalt blue on cream paper (LACMA description, confirmed against the image). The back is in colour ("atmospheric spatial video images", per modernism101); not seen. The typesetting was done on a Mac and LaserWriter, eight sheets of 8.5 × 11 joined by hand.
2. Composition — landscape format, ratio 1 : 2.8. A nude figure lies along the whole length, head left, feet right; when the poster is hung vertically, the figure stands at life size. The body is not a single scan but blocks: seams are visible at the waist and thighs (Cooper Hewitt: "segmented at the waist and thighs") — these are the traces of eight LaserWriter sheets, left in as a cut. Lower left is a spiral galaxy; along the bottom edge a broken timeline with tiny captions, from the Big Bang to inventions; on the right are large bitmap letters and the caption "the spiritual double", next to a second, inverted head with open eyes (Cooper Hewitt: "upside-down head of another woman with open eyes"); also on the right is a blue rectangle with the Earth and Moon. The eye enters on the face with closed eyes, slides down the body and stops at the second head — two gazes, one asleep, the other watching. All other elements (hands holding objects, brain, diagrams) are fragments of different sizes, scattered without a grid ("floating").
3. Colour — one, cobalt blue. The tone comes from screen density: MacVision dithering of the video footage renders the skin as fine grain, the background stays empty. A single colour is a printing decision, because of the enormous format, but also an argument — a pixel doesn't need colour. The back is in colour; the two sides carry two registers.
4. Typography — the Mac's bitmap typeface, in two sizes: small text at 72 dpi, which reads as texture, and enlarged letters, stretched in MacDraw, with visible "jaggies". The typeface name is not confirmed (Chicago/Geneva class). The title is not set large on the front — the message is carried by the body, not the word.
5. Message — "Does it make sense?" — a question about the meaning of the new medium, posed with the author's naked body: I am in the machine, the machine is in me. From five metres: a blue figure, one grain. At three seconds: the pixels are deliberate, not a mistake.
6. Why exactly this way — the constraint is a Mac with 512 K and the LaserWriter's 8.5 × 11 format: the whole poster could not be made in a single file, so it was split into segments; the resolution could not be increased, so the letters were enlarged. Both constraints stay visible, in the body's blocks and in the jaggies. Friedman gives her the issue to do about her own work; she refuses a classic retrospective and changes the format instead — because format is the first thing a new tool changes.
7. What would kill it — one stroke in Photoshop, a smoothed edge. The moment the pixel becomes "clean", the poster becomes just a large photograph of a naked woman.

Principles: Cheap technique as language (low resolution as the medium's handwriting — the technique is cheap not in cost, but in pixel count), Grain and blur as shape, Hybrid image by resolution, Format is the first decision, Extreme mismatch of scale (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 letters spell out — "84" or "BA", top right.

V&A O1176676 · slika

1. What it is — "poster or folder", multicolour offset, 28 × 117 cm (V&A) — an extreme landscape strip 1 : 4.2 that folds into a brochure. Client: CalArts. The date per V&A is 1978; the year 1977 given by Kutztown is not confirmed by a source. Both are credited.
2. Composition — a white hall in perspective (a photo of the CalArts atrium) running the whole length as a stage; "dropped" into it are objects at the wrong scale: a huge female 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" set small, top left, next to 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 across the objects — deliberately without a single focal point.
3. Colour — the white hall as background, three solid colours (the orange dancer, red diagonals, yellow accents) and colour photographs; there's no palette, there's photography.
4. Typography — small, in blocks along the edge, subordinate to the image; the typeface class is not confirmed at the available resolution.
5. Message — the school is a space that holds everything, at any scale. From five metres: a white tunnel with a face. At three seconds: a collage.
6. Why exactly this way — two authors, a photographer and a designer: the format is a strip so the hall photograph could be long, and folding it into a brochure 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: Extreme mismatch of scale Floating plane casts a shadow Hybrid image by resolution (hall photo + colour portraits + flat planes) To verify against the image: the V&A photograph is small (the folder on black velvet) — the typeface, the text content, the exact number of panels have not been verified against the image; who photographed the hall remains open.

V&A O140223 · slika

1. What it is — 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, vertical format: white frame; pink field x 6–92 / y 12–68 %; inside it a blue square of sky x 22–74 / y 22–62 %; bare legs in red shorts emerge from the square and PLANT a foot on the white "ground" below the field (foot y ≈ 71 %), with a cast shadow. Along the left and right edge of the field, yellow-orange pastel strokes (airbrush/pastel). Bottom left the Olympic "star in motion" logo, bottom right a line reading "Los Angeles 1984 Olympic Games" (y ≈ 86 %). The eye enters on the red shorts (the only saturated colour), slides down the leg, lands on the foot and the shadow — that shadow is the whole trick: the figure has stepped out of the image onto the paper.
3. Colour — sky blue (one photograph), pink and pastel yellow as atmosphere, red only on the shorts, mint below the horizon. Three floating planes of different saturation — depth without perspective.
4. Typography — one line of grotesque (sans serif) at the bottom, small, acting as a signature; class Helvetica — the name is not confirmed. The image takes up 95 % of the poster.
5. Message — the athlete steps out of the image into the viewer's space; the light of LA (pastel, sky). From five metres away you see a red dot and two legs, up close also the shadow.
6. Why exactly this way — the official poster series calls for legible sport without a face; Hofmann's body fragment (Stadttheater) carried over into colour and into space. Airbrush and pastel are Odgers's register; the solution "floating square + shadow" is hers.
7. What would kill it — remove the shadow under the foot: the legs would again be inside the photograph, not in front of it.

Principles: Floating plane casts a shadow Extreme mismatch of scale (legs at human scale, the sky square at window scale) Transparent layer as depth (pastel strokes over the pink, under the blue) To verify against the image: whether the pastel was printed as a separate colour or in process; who the model is; the exact year (1981 design / 1982 print).

· 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). The LACMA record has no image; PGDA shows an image of the upper half.
2. Composition — upper part: a black band with a turquoise triangle and the logotype "P D C 2" (red squares + white one with a number); a yellow lightning-triangle enters diagonally; "Your Turn" and "My Turn" in two lines of bold grotesque, on a slight diagonal (≈ 10°), each line 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 seen from space, scattered small numbers and stardust. The eye enters on "Your", led by the diagonal and the colour offset.
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, deep violet; plus yellow, red, black. Colour here is not hierarchy but OPTICS: without the glasses it's vibration, with the glasses it's 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 typeface/cut. Stretched/condensed letters and numbers read as space, not as text.
5. Message — "your move, my move": two layers (cyan/magenta) are two interlocutors; the title becomes a demonstration of the theme. From five metres: red-blue flicker. Three seconds with the glasses: 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 made as an exchange of two channels.
7. What would kill it — align cyan and magenta into register: all that's left is an ordinary bold title on a diagonal.

Principles: Overlap gives a third colour (cyan × magenta = violet, and that is DEPTH, not just colour) Transparent layer as depth Text as an object in space Format is the first decision (poster + glasses) To verify against the image: the lower half; how it looks through the glasses (not available to view online); 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 — the first Mac works.
2. Composition — measured from the image: background a peach-orange dither gradient from the top, turning into white with scattered dots; central square x 18–78 / y 8–58 % — the Vitruvian Man as a white bitmap (coarse pixels) over a gradient from magenta to cyan, framed by an orange grid of small marks; 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 lecturers 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 onto "space".
3. Colour — orange, magenta, cyan, yellow, black: process colours as layers (gradients), not as flat fields. Each layer has its own resolution: the dithered background (fine), the bitmap figure (coarse), the photograph (continuous). Colour does not set the hierarchy — depth does (what is in front).
4. Typography — the title is Mac bitmap enlarged to a visible pixel, yellow with a black outline to separate it from the cyan; the 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: "a change in the concept of space" shown within the image itself. From five metres: a square with a gradient and the yellow name. At three seconds: the figure is made of little blocks.
6. Why exactly this way — the theme (space) calls for depth; the Mac in 1986 gives only bitmap and gradient; the solution: stack five layers of different origin so each is a different "plane" — depth without perspective (Cooper Hewitt: "the page as a three-dimensional space").
7. What would kill it — one resolution for everything (a vectorised Leonardo): the layers would merge into a single plane and the space would disappear.

Principles: Hierarchy by depth Hybrid image by resolution Transparent layer as depth Grain and blur as shape (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, printed by Art Litho. Co., Baltimore; MoMA 36 × 24 in (91.5 × 61 cm) — the image is shown landscape (842 × 563 px, whole piece with border), so it is probably 61 × 91.5 (h × w); the client is not in the record. Gift of the designer.
2. Composition — landscape format. A yellow field with white diagonal stripes (waves) across the whole surface; the title "Snow White + the Seven Pixels" in two lines of large bitmap serif (black), over 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 lines of lecture text (red/blue); top right a red spiral mark (a target); bottom right a white rectangle with a photograph of a wire-frame ball/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 ground (the whole surface), blue and red as halftone/line, black for the letter. The white stripes are "subtracted" yellow — a negative. Pop palette, but all of it in halftones.
4. Typography — bitmap serif in the title (pixel-Times class not confirmed): Snow White (classic, serif) + pixels (bitmap) in one typeface — the title is a joke carried out typographically. The small text set vertically, letterspaced.
5. Message — a fairy tale in seven pixels: the 1986 Mac as Snow White in the dwarfs' house. From five metres: yellow with black lettering. At three seconds: the serif is made of little blocks.
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 Weingart's trademark.
7. What would kill it — the title in a smooth Times.

Principles: Cheap technique as language Hybrid image by resolution (bitmap serif + halftone + video still) Transparent layer as depth (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 lists 98.5 × 68 cm, LACMA 98.74 × 68.1 cm. Printed in four colours by offset, with fluorescent process colours (only PGDA states this). V&A and LACMA describe the technique as "offset lithograph" — LACMA's photograph description wrongly says "screenprint", but the record itself states offset. PGDA notes "Location made: Italy".
2. Composition — vertical format. A yellow band across the top (y 0–8%) shifts from yellow into red toward the right edge. The upper half is a black field, the lower one magenta, both pierced by the same white organic "clouds" that descend diagonally through the format. Right of centre is a rectangular photograph of a wave (x 30–80 / y 40–62%), in halftone/dither, with a transition from yellow-orange (left) to blue (right) — the wave's foam breaks apart into dots. The word "Pacific" is set in a stepped diagonal across the black field (y ≈ 30%), in white, torn bitmap serif; "1987" sits below it, in the same typeface. Top right are pink brush strokes, to the left of the photograph small upright text. The eye enters on the wave — the only photograph — then moves to "Pacific", then down through the clouds to "1987".
3. Colour — black / magenta / yellow / white, blue only in the photograph. Fluo magenta (V&A calls it "hot pink") gives the impression of Los Angeles light. Black above and magenta below turn the landscape upside down — the sky is dark, the ground light. The white clouds are the same shape in both fields: one layer piercing two fields, Transparent layer as depth without transparency, only through a cutout.
4. Typography — "Pacific" and "1987" carry a deliberately damaged letterform: the bitmap is enlarged and stretched (MacDraw stretch), edges torn like a raster. The specific typeface is not confirmed (probably a serif class). The title cannot be read from five metres — that's the intent: the word behaves like a wave, not like a sign.
5. Message — California in Venice: wave, sun, fluo. From five metres you see a black-pink field with white holes and a wave; from three seconds the foam breaks into pixels.
6. Why exactly this way — a design exhibition set up in a textile museum: the poster behaves like fabric — repeated clouds, fluo colours — more than like an advertisement. The 1987 Mac brings the dither transition into the photograph, and that transition is placed exactly in the wave, where the foam is grainy anyway.
7. What would kill it — a clean title in Helvetica across the top would turn the piece into a tourist poster.

Principles: Grain and blur as shape (wave foam = dither) Text as an object in space Transparent layer as depth Hybrid image by resolution To verify against the image: the exact fluo colours (PGDA doesn't list them); content of the upright text; whether "Pacific Wave" is the name of the exhibition or just the poster — not confirmed.

MoMA 40.2024 · PGDA 1314

1. What it is — poster for the Workspace 87 conference/fair, 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 catalogues it in "Design Excellence: 50 Posters of the 80s".
2. Composition — vertical. Red-white rays from a point on the left edge (x 0 / y 35%) spread across the entire format; red vertical stripes along the left and right edges; 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 below centre (y 78%); a 3-D blue chair/block (computer render, isometric) lower right x 45–80 / y 60–90%; yellow-green dither transition lower left. Text: "Workspace 87" vertical in a black band upper 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 (beside the chair leg, and mirrored). The eye enters on the eye, falls to the chair, reads the words along the way.
3. Colour — the red ray and white background carry the energy, green and yellow are flat fields, blue appears only on the 3-D object, the photograph is black-and-white. Colour follows the origin of the layer: the render is blue, the video is grey, the field is green.
4. Typography — every word is an object: upright, diagonal, mirrored, spaced out; none is a "title at the top". Bitmap grotesque carries the title, spaced grotesque carries the words. Typeface names not confirmed.
5. Message — the workspace of the future: a city seen from above, an eye that watches, a hand that works, a chair out of the computer; the three words are the conference theme. From five metres you see the red rays and the blue chair. From three seconds everything is flying.
6. Why exactly this way — by 1987 3-D render and video already exist; the poster doesn't hide them, but gives each its own layer and its own angle — it's a catalogue of the media Workspace promises.
7. What would kill it — aligning the words horizontally and removing the rays leaves just a collage.

Principles: Hierarchy by depth (the chair in front of everything = the newest technique closest) Hybrid image by resolution (render + video + photo + dither) Text as an object in space Floating plane casts a shadow (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.