Does It Make Sense?^351
April GreimanDesign Quarterly# 133 ( 1986 ) was no
ordinary magazine. Although
disguised as a common thirty-two-
page magazine format, upon opening,
the issue unfolded accordion style
until, when finally extended and
opened, it metamorphosed into a
single-page poster, measuring
approximately two by six feet.Design
Quarterly,then edited by Mildred
Friedman, was a publication of the
Walker Art Center in Minneapolis
directed toward the international
design community. Each issue focused
on a single theme, and, in 1985 ,Design
Quarterlyinvited April Greiman
(b. 1948 ), a pioneer of computer-
generated design, to design an issue
of the magazine about her work.
Instead she transformed
the magazine into a poster, a life-size
digitized, nude self-portrait. Greiman’s
eyes are closed and her left breast is cloned onto the right side of her
body. Another close-up of her head, this one with eyes wide open, projects
from the vertex of her feet under the heading “the spiritual double.”
Superimposed type and image ideograms were dispersed over the surface of
the poster, and photographs of dinosaurs, outer space, hieroglyphs, formulas,
weather pattern symbols, and disembodied miniature hands performing
mysterious acts all orbit around the meditative, naked Greiman. A tally
stick, simultaneously suggesting a time line and growth chart, underscores
the length of the poster and emphasizes the physicality of the oversized
page. In addition, time line entries mark major scientific innovations,
including “Electricity 1831 ,” “Relativity Theory 1905 ,” and “Man on the
Moon 1969 ” as well as “Birth of April Greiman 1948 .” The scale below the
hash marks reads in ticker tape fashion: “proton·neutron·electron·moron·