milli·micro·nano·pico·kilo·mega·giga·tera·order·chaos·play·dream·dance·make
sounds·feel·don’t worry·be happy.”
The reverse side renders tales of dreamlike narrations in floating
text boxes, a Zen koan, ambiguous, large-scale photographs, and an
agonizing step-by-step record of the process of working with the new
computer technology.
Flight of fancy or logic puzzle? Did it make sense?
Greiman’s poster was a compendium of the preceding decade—a
nation bloodied by the Vietnam War saw the rise of feminism, Eastern
religion, consciousness-raising, spiritual awakening, and reinvigorated interest
in Jungian archetypes and dream symbology. It was also a formalist
autobiography. Graphically, designers grew restless with the absolute order
and clarity of the reigning classic Swiss modernism. In the early 1970 s
Greiman studied with Wolfgang Weingart and Armin Hofmann at the Basel
School of Design in Switzerland where a spirited climate of innovation and
research nourished inventive typographic experiments: extreme leading,
wide letterspacing, typographic weight changes mid-word, alternative text
divisions—pushing typographic expression toward the personal, expressive,
and, occasionally, humorous. Technically,Does It Make Sense?was dazzling.
As director of visual communications at CalArts in 1982 , Greiman
had early access to state-of-the-art video and digitizing equipment formerly
used by Nam June Paik. The Macintosh computer was introduced in 1984.
By 1986 the collage in Does It Make Sense?involved no conventional paste-
up; it was composed and assembled as a single document in MacDraw and
printed out as it was designed on screen, tiled out on 81 ⁄ 2 " × 11 " sheets of
bond paper. It was a feat only dreamed of until then—the ability to bypass
conventional paste-up production methods. The text function of the
MacDraw program for the first time allowed direct composition of text in
relation to the digitized video images.
Before Does It Make Sense?bit-mapped type and imagery had been
an anathema to designers; the computer was arcane, expensive, and
unfriendly. With its publication, the design world was challenged to take
another look. Decontextualized images, thematically mixed texts, apparent
non sequiturs, floating text blocks, typography set in mirror image, humor,
and personal juxtapositions were all recontextualized and revoiced as
Greiman’s own in a pyrotechnic meld of form and content. It was rendered
coherent by the digital medium.
The personal computer would eventually open opportunities for
new levels of authorship for designers. Although the role and legitimacy of
personal expressiveness in graphic design is still being evaluated,Does It
Make Sense?is a touchstone: the creation of self-referential statements and
compositions through the medium of professional graphic design
tuis.
(Tuis.)
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