Herbert Matter

1. What it is — poster for the Swiss National Tourist Office. Photogravure (intaglio), 101.6 × 63.8 cm (MoMA 153.1968, gift of the designer). The technique matters. In photogravure the ink sits in the recesses of the plate, and the depth of the recess determines how much ink transfers to the paper. That's why it gives a full, continuous photographic tone that lithography of the period doesn't. (Lithography: printing from a flat plate on which only the greasy drawing accepts ink.)
2. Composition — reading of the work: a face with ski goggles takes up almost the full width and roughly the top 75% of the height. It's tilted, the gaze goes up-right. The goggles sit in the top third and mountains are reflected in them — the landscape is inside the face, not behind it. Bottom left, on white snow, is a small skier mid-descent, about 5% of the format's height. The scale ratio of face : figure is about 15 : 1. The eye enters the goggles (the darkest and brightest point), slides down the nose and chin to the lettering, and only then "finds" the skier. Depth doesn't come from perspective, only from the difference in size. Everything is frontal.
3. Colour — reading of the work: three tones, not two. The face is in a warm brown-ochre monochrome (photographic tone). Blue appears only in the reflection in the goggles and in a band of sky on the right, red only in the lettering. The snow is white. Colour is scarce and therefore works as a hierarchy: blue = distance and cold, red = the word, brown = the body.
4. Typography — reading of the work: PONTRESINA sits in the bottom sixth, across the chin. The letters are heavy, narrow, capitals (capitals = uppercase letters), red with a white edge — drawn, not set from a typeface (lettering). "Engadin" is small, white, below right. The lettering doesn't sit on the seam between the two photographs (the face and snow meet diagonally, at bottom left), but across the face — so it reads as part of the montage, not as a caption. The specific typeface is not named: this is a letterform drawing, not a typeface.
5. Message — it's not "a beautiful mountain", but the face of a person who was there. Tourism is sold through experience, not through landscape. It passes the five-metre test because of the face.
6. Why exactly this way — photogravure with few colours is cheaper than full colour, and it carries photography better. Photomontage is the only way to bring two distances into the same plane. The constraint and the idea coincide. The reflection in the goggles saves one image: the landscape is there without taking up any of the format.
7. What would kill it — equalising the scales: it would become a postcard with two motifs. Or colouring the face naturally — the unity of tone holding the montage together would disappear.

Principles: Extreme mismatch of scale Photograph is the layout

Cooper Hewitt · MoMA zapis

1. What it is — a poster for the Swiss Tourist Office, for Matter's birthplace. Two-colour photogravure on white wove paper, 101.9 × 63.7 cm (wove: smooth paper with no visible texture). Notes on sources: Cooper Hewitt dates the poster to 1935, while MoMA (5333) dates it to 1936.
2. Composition — citanje rada + Cooper Hewitt's description: an enormous knitted glove, palm toward the viewer, takes up the right half, about 45% of the surface. It partly obscures the smiling face of a young woman in the left half — a game of hiding, not montage for montage's sake. Upper left is the silhouette of a cable car cabin and Alpine peaks against a blue sky. From the cable car, thin white cable lines radiate; they cut across the sky and lead the eye from the title downward, toward the face (Cooper Hewitt states this explicitly). Below is a narrow band with "schweiz suisse switzerland" across the collar. Everything is frontal, nothing in perspective. That is why the size mismatch reads as surreal, not as depth. Cooper Hewitt says the montage does not read as one coherent image, but as a series of concentric ideas. On the palm is an eight-pointed star — a traditional Norwegian knitting motif (selbu). The sign for wool and cold is taken from the knitter, not from graphic design.
3. Colour — citanje rada + measurement: four values can be distinguished on the print — blue sky, brown-sepia face, grey-white glove with black motif, and orange-red in the typography. MoMA lists the print as a two-colour photogravure, and measuring the reproduction supports this: saturated colours cover only about 20% of the surface. The blue of the sky (#547585) and the orange in the word "berg" (#96583a) are muted; everything else is a warm grey photographic tone. Two colours, their overlap, and the white paper can yield more values than there are colours. The key point is this: each plane has its own value — the sky cold, the body warm, the glove neutral. This holds three separate photographs together as one image.
4. Typography — citanje rada: "engelberg" large, in lowercase, across the sky above the montage — and split by colour in the middle of the word: "engel" light, "berg" orange-red. Cooper Hewitt sees an echo of the Swiss flag (red-white) in this. The word thus reads doubly too: Engel = angel, Berg = mountain. "trübsee" sits below on the right, smaller, also in lowercase. At the bottom, in small type, "schweiz suisse switzerland" — three languages in one line, a solution for the foreign market without a second version of the poster. The typeface is a heavy block grotesque (grotesque = a sans-serif typeface); specific typeface not confirmed.
5. Message — a greeting with a gloved hand. In three seconds: winter, joy, closeness. Not a single sentence of explanation.
6. Why exactly this way — in two-colour photogravure the palette is limited to two colours, so everything has to be solved through tone and scale. The star on the glove is an ornament that already existed in the object — it did not need to be drawn.
7. What would kill it — equalising the values of the planes (everything in the same tone, or everything in full colour). Or placing the glove beside the face instead of over it: the game of hiding disappears, leaving only a collage. A third killer: shrinking the glove toward the hand in perspective.

Principles: Extreme mismatch of scale Two colours, deep print Frontal juxtaposition Word cut by colour Line as eye path Ornament from the object

Notes on sources for this entry. For this work there is technique, measurements, a museum description of the composition, a published analysis (Cooper Hewitt's blog), and a good reproduction.

1. What it is — a poster from the same series, but in English, i.e. for the foreign market. Photolithograph, 101 × 64.1 cm (MoMA 169.1950). (Photolithograph: a lithograph in which the image is transferred to the plate photographically.) The tone is coarser than in the photogravure, but the technique allows more colours.
2. Composition — citanje rada: a smiling female face with a white visor takes up the upper left half (about 60% of the width and 55% of the height) and looks down-right, toward the text. The entire background is a slanted hatching — the slope and snow are rendered as a series of lines, not as a photograph. (Hatching: a dense series of parallel lines that produces tone.) Along the diagonal from upper right to lower left, five to six tiny skiers are scattered. This creates distance without perspective: not through the scale of space, but through the number of small figures. One skier is framed by a circle, as in a lens or a gunsight — this is the point around which the diagonal turns. The white Swiss cross stands on the left, at the centre. The eye moves: smile → down the diagonal of skiers → SWITZERLAND. The face is mass, the text is direction.
3. Colour — citanje rada: the face is in a brown duotone, as in 01 (duotone: a photograph printed in two colours, usually black and one warm tone). The background is a cool grey-blue hatching. Green appears only in the word SWITZERLAND, red only in traces (the cross, the glow around the skier). Warm and cool are separated by object: the person warm, the mountain cold. Green is the third, "neutral" colour of the word, so it does not compete with either of them.
4. Typography — citanje rada: two layers. "Winter Time is Real Holiday Time" is in a white italic grotesque with a dark outline (italic = slanted letters) and is laid along the slope's incline — the text follows the diagonal of the hatching. SWITZERLAND is large, green, in a heavy grotesque, sloping slightly upward from left to right across the lower third. Matter solved the longer English sentence by laying it on the diagonal: the text does not cut across the format, but "skis" over it. Specific typeface not confirmed.
5. Message — the same formula, translated for a different market. The question for every system: what stays the same when the language changes? With Matter, the image, because the image needs no translation.
6. Why exactly this way — the tourist office targets the British and American markets, and photomontage is a language that works without translation.
7. What would kill it — the sentence set horizontally. It would immediately need two lines, would cut through the face or the skiers, and the only link between text and image — the incline — would vanish. A second killer: a photographic mountain instead of hatching; the tiny skiers would get lost in it.

Principles: Extreme mismatch of scale Arrow and diagonal as motion Texture instead of photo background

1. What it is — not a poster, but a programme or flyer for the Corso Theater in Zürich. Letterpress, 21.3 × 14.9 cm; printed by Buchdruckerei Zum Gutenberg AG. (Letterpress: ink is taken up by the raised surface of the type or plate, as with a stamp.) It comes from the Jan Tschichold collection (MoMA 723.1999) — thus a work that one of the most important typographers of the 20th century thought worth preserving. The date is wide (1930–40), the Swiss period.
2. Composition — citanje rada: a photomontage of a woman's head takes up the lower two-thirds, centred. The eyes are replaced by blue hatched blotches — a surrealist move. Across the forehead and hair runs a row of six to seven tiny dancers, like a crown. Over everything sits a thin white circle, about 60% of the format wide — a geometry that ties the head, the dancers, and the lettering into one sign. The background is dark smoke or clouds, of a photogram character (photogram: an image obtained without a camera, using objects placed on photo paper); below is a dark mass. The eye moves: circle → dancers → eyes → down.
3. Colour — citanje rada: grey photographic monochrome + one blue, only in the eyes. One colour in two small spots is enough to give the whole page a temperature. The same recipe as in 01, where blue appears only in the glasses.
4. Typography — citanje rada: "Corso" is hand-lettered, white, upper left, loose, like a neon sign. "Zürich" is small, right of centre. There is no typesetting in the classical sense — the word is drawn, as in 01.
5. Message — a nightclub, a revue, a dream: the dancers in her hair are literally what is in her head. Entertainment, not landscape. A useful contrast with Hofmann's Basel theatre posters: Hofmann would never have replaced the eyes.
6. Why exactly this way — small format and letterpress: the photograph has to be a single cliché (a metal plate with a relief image), so everything is solved in the montage before printing, not in printing. Every additional colour is an additional pass through the press — hence blue kept to a minimum.
7. What would kill it — removing the circle. Without it, the head, the dancers, and the lettering are three separate things on a dark background.

Principles: Photograph is the layout One colour in two spots Geometry ties the montage together This flyer also shows that the same method works at 21 cm and at 100 cm.

1. What it is — a war poster for the Office of Emergency Management, the US federal agency for emergency situations. Offset lithograph, 102.5 × 75 cm (MoMA 118.1944). (Offset: lithography in which the ink transfers from the plate to a rubber cylinder first, and only then to the paper — fast and cheap for large print runs.)
2. Composition — reading of the work: here there is no disproportion of scale. One element: a black-and-white eagle with spread wings takes up about 80% of the format, on the diagonal (head lower left, wing upper right), on a white ground. The photograph of the eagle is the poster. Everything else is flag stripes in the corners (blue at top, red lower right) and text. The eye travels: AMERICA upper left → down the wing → beak → "Civilian Defense" at bottom. The eagle's diagonal is the only line.
3. Colour — reading of the work: black-and-white photograph + red and blue only as stripes and words. The flag is broken into pieces and distributed across the corners, never whole. CALLING and "Defense" are red; AMERICA is white on the black wing. Colour carries only two things: the nation (stripes) and the verb (CALLING).
4. Typography — reading of the work: heavy grotesque (sans serif), capitals. AMERICA and CALLING sit in two lines upper left, on the black wing — white on black, red on white; each line on its own ground. Below is small "Take your place in", then large "Civilian Defense", with a diagonal rhythm of stripes behind it. The civil defense emblem (blue circle with white triangle) sits lower right, like a stamp. Specific typeface not confirmed.
5. Message — five years after arriving, a Swiss immigrant makes a poster in which America calls its citizens. The eagle is not a coat of arms but an animal attacking: the photograph delivers a threat that a drawn emblem could not. In three seconds: danger + flag.
6. Why exactly this way — offset instead of gravure: wartime print run, speed, lower cost. Offset doesn't give the tone of gravure, so there's no montage with soft gradations. One hard photograph on white is what offset does well. The method adapted to the technique: the photograph is still the layout, but without disproportion.
7. What would kill it — the whole flag in the background. The stripes work because they are a fragment; a full flag would turn the eagle into an illustration on wallpaper.

Principles: Photograph is the layout Photograph instead of illustration Fragment of the symbol Disproportion of scale is Matter's recognisable move, but it's absent on this poster. The move is read on the work, not assumed from the author.

1945 · 1948

1. What it is — covers of the magazine Arts & Architecture by John Entenza, the organ of the Case Study House programme (a series of experimental modern houses in California). Format 10 × 12 in (25.4 × 30.5 cm). Louise Sandhaus (Earthquakes, Mudslides, Fires & Riots: California and Graphic Design 1936–1986, p. 58, cited in PGDA) writes that Matter arrives in Los Angeles in 1943 as a photographer and designer for the Eames studio and stays until 1946. At the magazine he works alongside Lustig, who designed the magazine's logo in 1942, and John Follis.
2. Composition — reading of the work, two different solutions. April 1945: a close-up of a child's face (black-and-white photograph, large eyes) takes up the right two-thirds. Over it run thin red lines — ellipses, like orbits around the head, and lower left is a red hand or plant. The photograph and drawing sit on the same plane, no shadow. May 1948: a white ground and one thick black band that curls across the whole format (cut paper or a photographed strip). Beside it are tiny black flecks and one small red figure lower right. No photograph of a face — pure shape. Shared trait: one large element edge to edge; the logo at top as the only fixed thing.
3. Colour — reading of the work: both are black + one red on white. In 1945 the red is a drawing over the photograph; in 1948 it's a small accent beside the black mass. The same two-colour discipline as on the Trübsee poster, a decade or so and a continent later.
4. Typography — reading of the work: the logo "arts & architecture" in narrow small letters across the top; this is Lustig's 1942 logo, not Matter's. The date is small, red. There is no other text: the cover is image and header, nothing else.
5. Message — a cover that does not show a house, though the magazine is about houses. The same principle as on Lustig's book jackets: a sign for the subject, not a picture of the subject.
6. Why exactly this way — a small magazine, small budget, and an audience already inside the subject: abstraction is permitted.
7. What would kill it — a photograph of a house. The magazine would become a catalogue.

Principles: Photograph is the layout Physical cutting forces the edge Sign for mood, not plot Each cover has two or three elements. The logo belongs to someone else (Lustig) and stands as a fixed header — Matter works below it, not around it.

Knoll — „Herbert Matter: Defining Knoll“

1. What it is — a twenty-year collaboration with a furniture manufacturer. Delivered: photographic style, mark, typographic grid, colour-coded catalogues — that is, a system, not a mark.
2. Composition — reading of the work, on the series' best-known ad, "Chimney Sweep", for Eero Saarinen's Womb chair: a light, empty ground; a red chair right of centre; in it a chimney sweep in a sooty work suit, sitting relaxed, tool in hand, legs crossed, filthy from head to toe. The object and figure take up the central third; everything around is empty. Lower centre is a small text block with a thin red vertical accent. There is no ambience, no room — studio, not interior: the chair is isolated like an exhibit.
3. Colour — reading of the work: the white/light ground is the base "colour". One red carries both the product and the typographic accent — the product's colour is the ad's palette. Everything else is black-and-white (the sooty clothing). In the catalogues colour serves for coding, not decoration.
4. Typography — reading of the work: a small block centred at the bottom, grotesque (sans serif), about 3–4% of the ad's height. The text is deliberately too small for an ad, because the photograph carries the whole message. Specific typeface not confirmed.
5. Message — the product isn't described, it's proven. A chimney sweep in soot on a light-coloured upholstered chair is a durability test for the fabric staged as an image: one photograph replaces a paragraph about the material. A dirty body in a clean form is both a joke and an argument. According to Knoll's writing, Florence Knoll didn't like the ad at first — she considered it undignified — while Hans Knoll backed it. Matter said he got the idea at the railway station in Basel. The ad ran in The New Yorker for thirteen years. Lesson: this is the cheapest copywriting there is — find the situation that proves the claim, instead of writing the claim. Note on sources: the ad's year of creation differs across sources. Knoll.com ties it to 1947, Knoll International to 1955; the Womb chair enters production in 1948. MoMA states the ad ran in The New Yorker every year from 1958 to 1971.
6. Why exactly this way — Knoll sells furniture to professionals, and for that audience the light and the camera angle are the argument. Hence the most useful conclusion from this piece: lighting is identity.
7. What would kill it — an ambient photograph with décor. The object disappears into the scene, and the system falls apart because every photograph would be shot differently.

Principles: Light is identity Photograph is the layout A situation instead of a claim Product colour is the palette

Calder Foundation

1. What it is — a film, 20 minutes, 16 mm, colour, sound, produced by New World Film Productions for MoMA; the first colour film about Alexander Calder. (Calder: American sculptor, creator of the mobile — sculpture that moves on air currents.) Direction, camera and editing: Herbert Matter. Music: John Cage — confirmed by the film's title sequence. Narration and production: Burgess Meredith. Calder and Matter's son Alex appear in the film. The recording is available on the Calder Foundation YouTube channel.
2. Composition — reading of the work: the shots are poster-like — one object, frontal, centred, on a neutral background, with shallow depth of field (only the object is sharp, the background blurs). Example: Calder's wire spiral fills the entire frame like a drawing on a plane, with no other element. Same method as in the Knoll photographs: the object is isolated so it reads as a diagram of itself. With Calder, movement is the content itself, so film is the only medium that can describe it.
3. Colour — reading of the work: the film is in colour, but the title sequence is pure black and white. The objects stand on neutral backgrounds — the colour comes from Calder's own planes, not from the set design.
4. Typography — reading of the work: the title sequence is not in a grotesque, but is brush-lettered by hand — soft white letters on black ("THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART FILM LIBRARY", "A New World Film presentation", "Music John Cage"), then reversed, dark letters on a light ground ("Photography & Direction Herbert Matter"). The author whose posters are in heavy grotesque for film chooses handwriting — because Calder's work is bent wire, not a constructed form. The letter follows the material of the subject, not the author's mannerism.
5. Message — a sculpture that moves cannot be photographed; it can only be filmed. This is a rare, pure case where the medium chooses the content, not the other way around.
6. Why exactly this way — a photographer who works his whole life with fragment and cut naturally moves into editing in time. For a motion designer this is his most important work: the same hand on the poster and on the film.
7. What would kill it — a title sequence in grotesque. It sounds trivial, but it would turn the whole film into industrial documentation; handwriting tells the viewer that the object was made by hand. Another killer: narration that explains every shot.

Principles: Motion as subject Photograph is the layout Lettering follows the subject's material