Design Literacy: Understanding Graphic Design

and back of the piece is comprised of hundreds of small labels featuring the
handwritten names (and self-portraits) of the conference speakers. Some
were pasted ad hoc on top of the image on the front side, while the rest
(along with all the registration information and sender’s reply coupon) were
affixed willy-nilly on a board that was photographed and used as the back
side. Sagmeister asked all the participants to sign their names in ballpoint
pen or draw comic portraits. Naturally, scores of mistakes were made,
which, after copyediting, were corrected in a rather unorthodox manner.
“Some of the corrections were done directly on the poster while on the
phone with the client,” Sagmeister says, explaining how he crossed out
words and phrases and replaced them with his own handwriting. Rather
than leave empty space, Sagmeister wrote additional text as much to
enhance the chaotic nature of the poster as to offer conference lore. “I hid a
lot of small inside jokes and stories all over the poster, and I actually talked
to a number of people who read the whole thing start to end.” In fact, now
it can be told: One of the small hidden images, Sagmeister confesses, “is a
photograph of my testicles (I told the client that it was a picture of a
monkey’s knee).”
When the poster arrived in AIGA members’ mailboxes, it caused
the stir that Sagmeister had hoped for. Some recipients were enraged that
the AIGA, long the keeper of America’s modernist design tradition,
condoned such abhorrent, anarchic work. National headquarters in New
York received a few letters of protest, and even a membership was canceled.
But positive sentiments far exceeded the dissent. Viewed as an enticement
for prospective conferees to register for an event that promised to broaden
the design discourse, the poster served its purpose well. It effectively
promoted AIGA’s Mardi Gras and signaled that the event was not just a
staid congress of self-important old-timers. But most the “headless chicken
poster,” as it has come to be known, proved that when designing for
designers nothing is worse than resorting to clichés.