Section 03 · 5 plates
The poster was printed to be pasted over, which is why the surviving ones are documents
Swiss grids, psychedelic letterforms, and Olympic identities — the poster as a primary document.
The Zurich concert posters were printed to one format and pasted in runs, so the grid had to hold at a glance.
Photo: Musica Viva. Müller-Brockmann · Wikimedia Commons
Plate 12 · leads the section
Müller-Brockmann's Grid as a Moral Position
Reads Josef Müller-Brockmann's Zurich concert posters of the 1950s and 1960s — particularly the Musica Viva series — as arguments that mathematical structure was not only efficient but ethically preferable to subjective composition. Examines the grid not as a technical device but as a published stance.
Read the piece-
Mexico 1968: When the Olympic Identity Became a System
Documents Lance Wyman's identity for the Mexico City Olympics — the logotype derived from the op-art and Huichol pattern, the colour system, the pictograms, and the typeface drawn specifically for the games.
Plate 13 -
Push Pin Studios Ran the Other Way
Profiles Milton Glaser and Seymour Chwast's Push Pin Studios from its 1954 founding, and places its revival of Victorian ornament, Art Nouveau curves, and historical pastiche directly against the Swiss International Style that dominated serious design discourse in the same decade.
Plate 14 -
The Fillmore Posters, 1966–68
Covers the concentrated two-year period in which Wes Wilson, Victor Moscoso, and the Family Dog collective produced concert posters for the Fillmore and Avalon Ballroom, using illegible lettering and simultaneous colour contrast as deliberate effects rather than failures of craft.
Plate 15 -
Milton Glaser's Napkin, 1977
Reconstructs the documented circumstances of the I ♥ NY mark — the 1977 commission from New York State's Commerce Department, Glaser's account of sketching it in a taxi, the American Typewriter typeface, the red heart — and traces its subsequent life as both a licensed mark and an unlicensed global template.
Plate 16
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