Armin Hofmann

monograph: Poster Collection 07 — Armin Hofmann, Lars Müller, 2003

1. What it is — exhibition poster on Japanese architecture, Gewerbemuseum Basel. Print technique not given in the record.
2. Composition — reading of the work: the entire poster is four lines of letters TEMPEL / TEE- / HAUS / JAPAN, left-aligned, in the top ~55% of the format; the lower half is empty except a small block of exhibition details bottom right. The letters are built from horizontal slats — each letter is a bundle of parallel strips with gaps, like a wooden lattice/shoji. No image: typography is the illustration. The eye reads top to bottom, word by word, then drops into the emptiness — the emptiness below is the "garden".
3. Colour — reading of the work: not black-and-white but one orange-red (vermilion) for the letters, plus small black text on white. One colour, one job: the letters. Nothing else is coloured.
4. Typography — reading of the work: drawn letters, not typeset — capitals, wide, constructed from strips; "TEE-" with a hyphen splits the compound so the words fit into the same column. Small text: linear grotesque, not to be named.
5. Message — Japanese architecture shown through the construction of the letters, not a photograph of a temple. Analogy instead of illustration: slat = beam. At three seconds: Japan, wood, order. From five metres: four orange blocks and emptiness.
6. Why exactly this way — a museum poster, one colour. A constraint turned into an idea: if there's no money for an image, the letter must be the image. That's why the letter is constructed, not picked from a catalogue.
7. What would kill it — a photograph of the temple behind the letters. Or: the same letters in solid black without gaps — the lattice disappears, leaving only a thick headline.

Principles: Analogy instead of illustration Letter as construction White space as shape Colour as hierarchy, not decoration Not an example of Black and white before colour: here the single colour is the idea itself.

1. What it is — a poster for the Basel city theatre; the message is literally "the number of subscribers is rising". Lithograph, 126.1 × 89.2 cm, printed by Frobenius AG Basel (MoMA 1480.2000, gift of the designer).
2. Composition — reading of the work: black background; a mass of angular human figures (pictograms made of sharp strokes, arms raised, mid-stride) climbs diagonally from bottom-left to top-right, in stepped rows that thicken and overlap toward the top. "Growth" is neither an arrow nor a diagram but a multiplying crowd climbing — the audience itself is the graph. The figures occupy ~70% of the surface; the text sits in the corners the figures leave free. The eye follows the diagonal of the figures, then goes to STADT THEATER BASEL at top right.
3. Colour — reading of the work: black + one grey-blue for the figures + white text. The figures are light on black: theatre = darkness, audience = light. One colour works both as tone (grey) and as temperature (cool blue).
4. Typography — reading of the work: linear grotesque, light cut, white; "Die Abonnentenzahl steigt" top left, STADT/THEATER/BASEL in three lines top right, "Spielzeitbeginn 17. Sept." centre right, small programme text bottom right, and "Stadt Theater Basel" rotated 90° along the left edge — text as the edge of the format. The typography doesn't compete with the figures: small point size, lots of space. Typeface not to be named.
5. Message — the institution boasts about a number. What's interesting is that it's not an advert but a report — a poster as public announcement, a form that today practically no longer exists.
6. Why exactly this way — large-format lithograph, one colour pass, a theatre with a consistent visual identity across seasons.
7. What would kill it — an arrow or a graph. Or: the figures evenly spaced — without the thickening toward the top there's no growth, just a pattern. He does use a pictogram — but in multiplicity and in a density gradient, so it works as composition, not as an icon.

Principles: Point, line, plane Speed is repetition and shift Arrow and diagonal as motion Crowd as diagram In short: growth = sequence + density gradation, not a tonal gradient. Same principle as Huber's Monza (repetition + shift) — here used for statistics instead of speed.

MoMA zapis · PGDA

1. What it is — poster for a classical ballet (outdoor performance), Basler Freilichtspiele, 1959. Photolithograph, 127.6 × 90.1 cm, printed by Wassermann A.G. Basel (MoMA 380.1963, gift of the designer).
2. Composition — the archive describes it through point, line and shape, while simultaneously carrying opposing ideas (simple/complex). In the image itself: blurred motion of the dancer's body as a soft grey gesture against hard typography. The eye enters the soft, then stops on the hard — that is the whole piece. reading of the work — layout: black ground; a blurred dancer occupying roughly the right ~60% of the width, a vertical white trace running almost the full height; the word "Giselle" rotated 90°, reading bottom to top, along the left edge, large; small details (Basler Freilichtspiele, dates, Rosenfeldpark) top left. Two verticals — soft (body) and hard (word) — stand side by side, not overlapping.
3. Colour — reading of the work: black and white only, no other colour. The grey scale comes solely from photographic blur.
4. Typography — reading of the work: linear grotesque, capital G + lowercase, one line, rotated — the rotation is what equates the word with the figure (both are "upright gestures"). Typeface: Akzidenz-Grotesk — confirmed, Fonts In Use (uses/1328, Staff Pick).
5. Message — ballet, but not through a picture of a dancer: through the trace of movement. At three seconds: motion. At five metres: a grey field against a sharp letter, and it works.
6. Why exactly this way — long-exposure photography is a cheap way to get a shape that cannot be drawn. The lithographic craft gives him confidence that the grey scale won't fall apart in print.
7. What would kill it — sharpening the dancer. The piece becomes a photograph of a performance, and the only contrast holding it together disappears.

Principles: Grain and blur as shape One axis of contrast Figure against ground Rotated text as figure

1. What it is — season poster for the Stadttheater Basel, 1963. Offset lithograph, 127.6 × 90.1 cm (MoMA 384.1963, gift of the designer).
2. Composition — reading of the work: black ground; five photographed hands in gestures (spread, pointing, grasping…), scattered across the whole format without a grid, each turned differently. The hands are shot so that only the rim light shows — outlines of white edges on black, the interior dark (solarisation or backlight). No body, no face: theatre = gesture. The text is small, centre-left, in a "gap" among the hands. The eye wanders from hand to hand — the composition deliberately has no centre, like a conversation in hands. To be viewed as part of a series (63/64, 64/65, 1967).
3. Colour — reading of the work: black and white + a single orange-red used only for the text (63/64 and STADT THEATER BASEL). The colour doesn't touch the image; it exists so the tiny text can be found at all.
4. Typography — reading of the work: minimal. "63/64" with a slash as a fraction and STADT/THEATER/BASEL in three short lines, linear grotesque, very small relative to the format (~3% of height). A 127 cm poster with text meant to be read from a metre away — because you recognise the image from twenty. Specific typeface not named.
5. Message — the season, not an individual production. That changes the task: the poster has to signal the institution, not the content.
6. Why exactly this way — a decade-long collaboration with the same client allows each subsequent poster to build on the previous one. That's a luxury almost no one has today.
7. What would kill it — putting in photographs from the season's productions. The institution would disappear behind the programme.

Principles: Series as identity Body fragment stands for the institution Colour only in the text What the series repeats and what it varies is summarised under work 06.

1. What it is — season poster, photolithograph, 127 × 90.2 cm (MoMA 271.1965, gift of the designer). Season slogan: theatre as a mirror of time.
2. Composition — reading of the work: an almost white poster — the reverse of 63/64. On a light ground, a barely visible, high-key photograph: a thin rectangular mirror frame (right half, slightly tilted) and in/around it a face dissolving into grey, large, cropped by the edge of the format. Mirror of time: the face isn't clearly visible because it's time that is being mirrored. Text top left and in the left column, everything left-aligned, the text column and the frame's edge sharing the same vertical. The eye: title → down the column → frame → the face that only appears once you stop.
3. Colour — reading of the work: no colour. Only the upper half of the grey scale — from white to mid-grey, with no black except in the title. Black is reserved for three words; the image mustn't be darker than the text.
4. Typography — reading of the work: "Stadt / Theater / Basel" in three lines, semi-bold cut of a linear grotesque, top left, ~8% of height; below, in the same left column, small season text ("Saison 1964/65 · Theater als Zeitspiegel" + a paragraph). The text is the only solid element on the poster — everything else is fog. Specific typeface not named.
5. Message — the season's abstract thesis, not a list of productions. This calls for an image that is a metaphor, not a scene — the same problem as Müller-Brockmann's concert poster, solved with photography instead of geometry.
6. Why exactly this way — technique: photolithography at this format allows a full tonal range; he uses it as material, not as reproduction.
7. What would kill it — boosting the contrast of the image "so it can be seen." The entire idea is that the face is barely visible; one click on Levels and it becomes an ordinary portrait in a mirror. The tension runs from white to grey, not from white to black: the piece deliberately leaves out the lower half of the scale.

Principles: Grain and blur as shape Figure against ground Legibility at the edge High key as message In short: motif = mirror + a disappearing face; three tonal zones (white, light grey, mid-grey) + black only in the title; text in left column.

1. What it is — poster for the Stadttheater Basel. Offset lithograph, 127.6 × 90.1 cm, printed by Wassermann A.G. Basel (MoMA 139.1968, gift of the designer). The shift from lithography to offset across the series is visible as a technological trace — the same hand, a different machine.
2. Composition — reading of the work: light ground; a large actor's face in a grimace (eyes bulging, mouth open) emerges from the bottom edge and occupies the lower two thirds, cropped on all sides — the face appears doubled, as if two exposures or a mask over a face. The grain is coarse, the contrast high: this is the "lower half of the scale" that 64/65 avoided. Top third: air, small text at top and a title centre-left, sitting exactly above the forehead — the title sits on the head. A thin vertical line drops from the top along the title like a plumb line.
3. Colour — reading of the work: black-and-white photograph + red used only in the title (and the small text). The same formula as 63/64 (colour = text, image = grey scale), except the ground is white instead of black.
4. Typography — reading of the work: "Stadt / theater / Basel" in three lines, a light cut of a linear grotesque, lowercase for "theater" (small letters, only Stadt and Basel capitalised), red, ~7% of height; two small paragraphs at top. Specific typeface not named.
5. Message — an institutional signature; by 1967, the Stadttheater is recognised by Hofmann's hand before the name is even read. The face in grimace = the actor, not the role; theatre as a body that contorts itself.
6. Why exactly this way — offset in 1967 means faster and cheaper, but also a different treatment of tone than stone lithography; anyone looking at the series can see how the pressure and grain change.
7. What would kill it — breaking the series with a redesign. The value lies in twenty years of repetition, not in a single piece.

Principles: Series as identity One axis of contrast Grain and blur as shape What the series repeats and what it varies (63/64 · 64/65 · 1967): - Repeats: format 127 × 90; a single photographic fragment of the body (hands / face in the mirror / face in grimace) without a set and without costume; the grey scale carries the image; text small, left-aligned, in three lines; colour only in the text (orange/red) or none at all. - Varies: the key of the tonal scale — black ground (63/64) → almost white (64/65) → white with hard black (1967); the amount of body shown (five hands → one disappearing face → one attacking face). The series is a single axis (hard/soft, dark/light) run through three seasons. That's the answer to "what repeats": the rule, not the look.

MoMA zapis 1964 · MoMA zapis GM 1967, bez slike

The poster „GM“ (1967, MoMA 110.2015) has no image and no client in the museum record. The same initials appear on a 1964 poster with a full record and image: GM is the Gewerbe-Museum Basel, which very likely identifies the 1967 client as well. The analysis below is of the 1964 poster.

1. What it is — poster for the exhibition „Architekturtheoretische Werke" from the Gewerbemuseum Basel collections. Lithograph, 127.6 × 90.5 cm, printer Wassermann A.G. Basel (MoMA 1479.2000, gift of the designer).
2. Composition — reading of the work: the upper ~70% is a black field, in it enormous white letters G and M, both cut off by the edge (G on the left, M on the right) — the letters are larger than the format. Inside the letters, as through a window, photographs of objects from the collection (lace/textile in the lower part of the G, books and a glass in the M). The letter isn't a sign but an opening through which the museum is seen. The bottom 30%: a white band, three short blocks of text left-aligned to ~30% of the width. Eye path: G → M → objects within them → text below. The letter is first recognised as a letter, and only then as an image — that's its "threshold of legibility" put into practice.
3. Colour — reading of the work: black and white only; photographs in greyscale inside the letters. The black ground makes the letters light, the photographs give tone — three layers of value without a single colour.
4. Typography — reading of the work: G and M in an extra-black cut of a linear grotesque, ~55% of the format's height; small text below in a light cut, three blocks, spacing between blocks equal to one blank line. Ratio of large to small size roughly 1 : 25. The specific typeface not confirmed.
5. Message — a museum of applied art shows its name and its collection at the same time, in one stroke. From five metres: GM. From one metre: lace, books, glass. Two posters in one, depending on distance.
6. Why exactly this way — the museum has objects but no budget for colour; the two-letter initial is large enough to become a container for a photograph. Cutting it off with the edge is what makes the letter monumental without enlarging the format.
7. What would kill it — whole letters within the format, with a margin. It would become a logo on a poster; as it is, the poster is inside the logo.

Principles: Legibility at the edge Letter as window Crop at the edge for scale Black and white before colour

1. What it is — a textbook (Niggli, 1965). Not about style but about point, line and plane and the relations between them.
2. Composition — the book is a series of exercises: one element, then two, then a relation; every page is proof of a single perceptual stance.
3. Colour — mostly black and white, consistent with the thesis that colour comes after.
4. Typography — grotesque, stripped down; the typography in the book doesn't show itself off.
5. Message — this isn't learned by looking at styles but by looking at relations. That's why the book has survived every change in technology since 1965.
6. Why exactly this way — pedagogy: the exercises have to be doable by hand, with the smallest possible means, so the student can see the cause.
7. What would kill it — replacing the exercises with examples of "good design". It would become a collection of taste instead of a set of tools.

Principles: Point, line, plane Relationship before form