In late 2021, I curated and exhibited an international collection of posters based on the theme of “into, through, and for design.” This public exhibition, which ran from December 2, 2021–January 28, 2022, in the McCoy Gallery, Rogers Center for the Arts at Merrimack College was attended by members of the Greater Boston design community and also the Merrimack College community. Posters in the exhibition included ones designed by Amsterdam-based graphic design studio Experimental Jetset, AIGA Medalist Chris Pullman, and the London-based independent design studio Bibliothèque. Many of the posters in the exhibition were hand-signed by the designers or directors.
During the planning and curation process, the Chair of Visual and Performing Arts (Nancy Wynn) at Merrimack lightly suggested that I consider making the exhibition participatory. Wynn’s suggestion served as a catalyst for inviting my own graphic design students to custom design a set posters within the theme.
I started collecting design-oriented posters in the late 1990s. Many of these posters are connected to our local (Boston) design history, while others are from all around the world. One of the great qualities many posters are that they are designed to be “self-exemplary.”
Much like the posters in this exhibition, in Edward Tufte’s 2006 book Beautiful Evidence, Tufte states that, “My books are self-exemplifying: the objects themselves embody the ideas written about.” The same could be said of many, if not all, of the posters included in this exhibition. Experimental Jetset’s 2006 poster, for instance, was designed to promote Gary Hustwit’s typeface-inspired documentary film Helvetica. Set in large scale left-aligned Helvetica poster reads, “Meet the cast,” followed by an all-caps A–Z alphabet.
The poster, be it digital or physical, has been, is, and will continue to be a globally celebrated vehicle for communication, expression, and cognition. Posters are used to protest, express, persuade, celebrate, promote, inform, and delight. Through continuous advances in typesetting technologies, the poster and graphic design itself have increasingly become radically democratized. From the 1980s on, professional graphic designers and amateurs could independently compose high-quality layouts at far less expense. This “desktop publishing revolution” unleashed typesetting technologies that were once only the realm of publishing professionals. Today, anyone with a laptop and any number of software packages is a “typesetter” or “imagesetter” and, thus, a graphic designer in some form.
This democratization may also help explain why design has become such a widely celebrated contemporary cultural practice. Amateur and enthusiast designers now join graphic design professionals in finding ways to both practice and celebrate design. Films, posters, and other artifacts concerning numerous aspects of design serve as cultural evidence. The posters in this exhibition showcase design tools, techniques, efforts, products, and innovations—evidence of objects, culture, and history. One way to frame these artifacts, and the catalysts for the title of the exhibition is Sir Christopher Frayling’s three-part definition of design research,—which imparts three critical modes of inquiry: research into design, research through design, and research for design. In various ways and to different degrees, the posters in this collection exhibit all three of Frayling’s modes. Some of the posters are educational, some are informational, some are promotional—but most fall into several of these categories. In and of themselves, they are also beautiful examples of design. Design is one of our uniquely human abilities and pursuits. Into, Through, and For celebrates this pursuit while showcasing an eclectic collection of artifacts representing it in both a global and local context.
Besides developing the graphics and signage for the exhibition, I also included one of my own posters in the show—a 2009 poster for the architecture firm Shepley Bulfinch. The poster won the 2009 AIGA Best of New England design award. A public talk and lecture were given in the gallery on December 2, 2021.
Credits—
Exhibition Design and Curation: Dan Vlahos
Interim Gallery Director: Jonathan Latiano
Student Participants: Nicholas Andriotakis, Jeff Converse, Sahana Gorur, Charles McGarigle, Lily Seremet, Gabriela Terrones, Oliver Williams
FILED IN: Design Research
