John Greiner Confronting The Image

Can you make signs that disappear?Where do solutions come from?What can a museum hang that isn’t art? How can it be both fat and thin?You only turned it horizontally?Will it really change people’s minds?Is design art?

SculpturePhotographyDesign 1954-2011

My life has centered around The Image. My involvement in all aspects of the image have formed and continues to inform my being.

Throughout my career as a designer, photographer, sculptor and teacher in the course of creating images I have been asked the questions on the left by clients, heads of corporations, museum curators, students and educators. In an attempt to answer these questions, I have chosen examples from my professional career in the visual arts as well as those of my former design students at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Illinois at Chicago. I hope they provide an insight into what sparks the initial idea for an image, why images take specific forms and where the creator goes to find those forms?

One insight into how we interact with images is provided by E. H. Gombrich in his wonderful 1979 book The Sense of Order, which states “We cannot separate the interaction between Seeing, Knowing and Expecting.” This equation is the most valuable that I know for the visual artist. You should recognize this idea at work throughout this book.

John GreinerChicago, 2011

In my first photo class at the Philadelphia College of Art in 1954, Instructor Sol Mednick watched me struggle printing my first photo-graph and said “The emotional content and the mood of the photo-graph from the viewer’s standpoint should drive the technique, not my predetermined idea of what photography is. Get rid of the frame. Remove the tone in the bottom half of the photo and increase con-trast slightly. Shift photo up so more snow comes in at bottom which carries and emphasizes the mood. When printing, keep the paper and color on the cool side and finally run the image off the top (give the snowballs room to fly) and bring the white space up the sides.”

Wow! So many lessons I use every day from my first year of study. It was this lesson that led me to decide that—Manipulating images in a meaningful way would not be a bad life.

I met Armin Hofmann at the Philadelphia School of Art in 1956. I took the opportunity to take a European discharge from the army in Frankfurt to study with him at the Basel Design School in 1960. The school had not yet devel-oped their now famous international graduate program, but I was fortunate to have classes with some amazing teachers— Kurt Hauert, Robert Büchler, Emil Ruder as well as Armin Hofmann. In Ruder’s class we hand composed lead and wood type and proofed it on hand presses. The experience of seeing the subtle difference between the printed surface of metal type as opposed to wood type and the thrill of composing the page into a visual concept using only letterforms remains with me today.

Freelancing for two years in New York, I did work for Penguin Books, Museum of Modern Art and ABC Radio. A valuable lesson was designing a catalog for Hermes Typewriters for an ad agency. My first layout showed a typewriter photographed in a certain way. The art directors reaction was “What’s the concept?” I realized there was none, and more importantly there must be one, otherwise what’s the point. I asked the agency for a Hermes typewriter, I took it apart and laid the parts on a light table, photographed them and throughout the catalog featured one part that performed a certain func-tion differently from other typewriters. It made clear to the reader just why these typewriters performed well and were different than their competitors.

The Nuts and Bolts of Hermes Typewriters

Hanging an exhibition at the New York AIGA gallery in 1965. From left: John Greiner, Fred Troller, Felix Muckenhirn, Markus Loew.

Geigy Chemical Corporation in Ardsley New York was a wonderful place for a young designer to work in the mid-sixtys. Creative sparks flew every day from the 9 Swiss and American staff members under design director Fred Troller. Significant design work was produced, lifelong friendships were formed and Geigy provided a huge stepping-stone to greater creative heights.

As a small child I noticed a section of a thick glass rod In my father’s glass workshop. There was a photo of me nearby. I instinctively picked it up and rolled it so it would fit into the rod opening and sat it down. My father kept it in his shop. Many years later at Geigy I was asked to design a promotional campaign for Preludin®—an appetite suppressant. I remembered the distortion caused by the convex glass rod. It led me to this solution. A cast epoxy concave/convex paperweight with a polished lead figure embedded. They were given to physi-cians to remind them of Preludin.® It was a very successful promotion.

What valuable images from our childhood we carry around in our subconcious.

At Unimark International in 1970 I was asked to create an identity for The Wickes Corporation, a conglomerate of many types of businesses. They took pride in be-ing “A Real American Company.” They had grown to be a fixture in the midwest and were now expanding their many businesses worldwide. Unimark management loved the symbol and wanted to be sure it was accepted when presented. I con-centrated on the presentation and focused on an all American symbol: an apple, that would speak to their pride in the company. The new symbol was introduced as small seeds in the apple which of course, would grow into bigger things. It was extremely well received and the symbol was used worldwide for many years.

Corporate identity manual

Proposed steel sculpture at Wickes Headquarters

Unimark in Milan introduced a line of office furniture that they wanted to sell in the states. It was very a simple modular design they called “Modulo 3.” An opening was arranged in a showroom and I was asked to design an invitation. The furniture’s description refered to “Business Building Blocks” which triggered a concept of mailing an invitation that could easily be assembled into a block.

The “Blocks” were scattered on some of the desks at the opening and provided for some welcome randomness.

In 1968 I began experimenting with multiple forms in wood and plexiglas. Parts were folded or bent in various ways and meant to be arranged as desired. Some were connected with plastic nuts and bolts dyed to match the color of the structures.The concept of allowing complexity to emenate from the combi-nation of simple forms was very appealing to me. The structures were exhibited and sold in multiples.

Sunspark 1969 Yellow Acrylic

Starplow 1968 Red Acrylic

Premonition was created to explore the difference between a feeling of something about to happen and the actual happening. Two sets of four iden-tical pieces assembled in various ways. Two structures painted a light blue/green and two painted a light green/blue. Premonition was exhibited in the “New Horizons in Art” exhibition at the Equitable building in Chicago in 1974.

Premonition 1974 Painted Wood

A Chicago developer wanted to identify his building at 444 North MichiganAvenue with a certain amount of class and high visibility. I proposed 12 foot high metal numbers placed on the sidewalk in front of the building. The devel-oper wanted to build it but could not get permission from the city. Instead he showed me a horizontal wall space in the lobby and asked if that could be used. I had already discovered that the same vertically stacked 4’s were readable as 4’s horizontally as well.

When I presented this to them I made a big deal out of coming up with the perfect solution for the wall space by simply lying the model of the 4’s horizontally on the table from it’s vertical position. It was one of those moments when no one spoke they just smiled at each other and looked at me strangely as if I was some kind of shaman. The wall relief was built from four levels of 3/4” plywood and painted an elegant gray. I began to have greater respect for geometry.

I was asked by the Art Institute of Chicago to produce a poster and catalogfor an exhibition of large scale sculpture in Grant park next to the museum. The massiveness of the proposed sculpture and how I thought they would contrast with the natural park surroundings were important to me. I wanted people to experience that contrast in the visual material. The hard edges and angle of typography carries the weight and aura of the sculpture and contrasts with the softness in form and color of nature.

What a challenge—to visually express the nature and spirit of a company using as few elements as possible. These symbols were created between 1971 and 1990.

South Shore BankChicago

Nagle Lumber Company

American Polyform Corporation

CareCallA telephone service for the elderly

The Woodstock Institute Chicago Housing AuthorityScattered Site Housing program

The Art Institute of Chicago did not want to hang paintings on a large stretch of wall in their newly renovated dining room, rea-soning that a dining area should serve as a visual respite.

The Art Institute and their architects were in agreement but were unable to come up with a visual solution.

So what do you hang on a wall of a large museum that is not art?

I recommended the work of the Chicago photographer Algimantas Kezys whose photographs of Chicago landmarks were bold patterns of black and white. They were to my mind also art, but if presented side by side in large 8’x8’ panels the black and white pattern was emphasized and they became more decorative. The theme of the city could be immediately grasped without examining them as “works of art”. Seven photos were greatly enlarged and each mounted on two 4’ x 8’ masonite panels and hung.

They served as a dramatic change of pace for the museum diners.

The director of Hedwig Dance Company showed me the photograph below to be used for a series of dances called “Dances for the Deep Field” which used the theme of Time, Space, Gravity and Suspension. The normal orientation of the pho-tograph with the male dancer, his back on the floor suspending a female dancer with another dancer jumping in the background was a wonderful photo, but when I looked at it lying on my desk at an angle the dancers seemed to be floating in

space, which was the theme. I recommended using the words “Defy Gravity” on the front. The director liked it and pointed out that “Defy Gravity” could also speak to the public about getting off their couch and coming out to a dance per-formance. Respect your clients purpose! Reorient your photographs! Rename your titles!

In 1987 the 27 Chicago Designers group decided to collectively issue a portfolio of posters commemorating Chicago’s 150 birthday. My theme was the Chicago Fire of 1871. The graphic possibilities of contrasting opposites inherent in past and present excited me. I gathered charred wood and metal debris, a copy of the Chicago Tribune the morning of the fire and photographed them. They were reproduced in black and white and actual size with gloss varnish. The photo-graph of the city at night appeared “ablaze.” It was matte varnished. The study in contrasts and opposites—past and present—utilized all the graphic and printing possibilities available to communicate the emotional impact of the fire.

In 1981 a client asked me if I ever used a computer. That was three years before Apple introduced the Macintosh. I told him I had no use for a computer because I had not exhausted all the possibilities of my typewriter. After he left I sat down before my IBM Selectric and started to do what I said I had not done. I typed in the coming year and repeated it, I discovered my typewriter was full of design options concerning spacing. Since the year was coming to an end I used the results as a New Years greeting card for my office. I think very often about what other possibilities were left unexplored as I type this on my iMac.

Accuracy is the same as precision

The Goethe-Institut/German Cultural Center had been a client for close to 30 years. During that time I had worked with 5 different directors and 6 directors of the language department. The programs always involved important issues. My task was to make the invitations and calendars of events as visually exciting as possible for those who cared about vital world affairs. Eventually the main office in Munich decided the internet could inform their audience more efficiently and with more central control over the images.—Can you argue with progress?

CulturalEventsWinter/Spring2004PRESORTED

FIRST-CLASS MAILU. S. POSTAGE

PAIDCHICAGO, IL

PERMIT NO. 8421

GOETHE-INSTITUT150 North Michigan AvenueSuite 200Chicago, Illinois 60601

Various Goethe-Institut events and program invitations from 1988 to 2006.

Poster for a Joseph Beuys exhibition at the Goethe-Institut Chicago in 1980. I was fascinated with Beuys work at the time. That year I went to Documenta in Kassel, Germany and saw a book dealer selling the poster with Beuy’s signature and stamp. I told him I designed the poster in Chicago. He told me if I wanted to buy it he would give me 10% off—Such is the nature of commerce and art —I have since developed my own stamp.

The new Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago was being renovated and due to open in 1974. I was asked by the museum to design a series of donor signs to place in the galleries. One of the museum curators told me that she hated signs and said, (perhaps in jest) “Could you design signs that disapear?” She never realized how helpful that comment was because I took her question seriously. The outside of the building was finished in stainless steel and I thought it appropriate to use that material inside as 9 inch square signs. If the surface was finished to reflect some light, the light and dark values on the surface would change as the viewer walked by and if the silk screened letter-ing were of a medium gray, the message would appear and disappear as well. I had designed signs that disappeared!

In 1978 my design office was across the street from N.A.M.E. gallery. The theme of an upcoming exhibition was the former mayor of Chicago, Richard J. Daley. The gallery asked me to submit a project and to design the mailing announcement. It was to be a very controversial exhibit considering the political aspects of the theme.

I proposed a 12’ high CorTen steel structure made of the five letters in his name. Art in America in their review of the exhibit showed it as an example of an “apolitical” piece. Actually I considered the size, materials and especially the placement—in “Daley Plaza,” to be overtly political.

The nature of small folders and brochures can be reflected in the choice of paper and the type of fold as well as graphics. Why not use a translucent paper which allows all pages to be seen at once?

A series of poster/mailers for Deson-Zaks Gallery in Chicago, The budget called for all information to be printed on one side in one color. I loved the challenge of integrating the postal information as part of the aesthetics. The poster folds down to the mailing and return address in the upper right. When opened, the return address becomes an integral part of the poster and the address and cancelled stamp go along for the ride.

America was getting ready to celebrate 200 years of independence in 1976. I wanted to do something personal to commemorate it.Congress considered passing a law requiring the metric system be taught in all public schools and I wanted to help. I developed a poster together with a wallet size folder to help us learn to convert. I made packaging and promotional materials and began to market them. Guess who had no use for the the best, most logical measuring system ever devised?

I photographed this angel on my first trip to Oaxaca in 1996.He became my angel of the ambiguities.

When I arrive in Oaxaca—He welcomes me with open arms.When I drink a toast with my margarita—He toasts me back with His margarita.When I am serenaded by Mariachi at the Zocolo—He is conducting.When I am acting foolishly or unwisely—He stops me.When I am angry I shake my fists to the heavens—like Him. When I photograph this magical city—He allows the perfect light to fall.When I leave—He waves and bids me adios.

March 2011 was my seventh trip to Oaxaca.

Following are some of the patterns and colors of Oaxaca.

In 2006 I began creating structures whose forms were not predetermined. They evolved from cutting, arranging, stacking, and positioning wood strips, akin to action painting in slow motion. Buzz (below) hangs on a wall. I’ve (right) sits on the ground. Where do these images come from? Are they actually not “predetermined”?

I love the challenge of taking ordinary objects and “reconfigure” them to impart another meaning. The Operation (Below) is from 2011. Orinoco (right) is from 1975 and was included in the Chicago Art Institute’s “Vicinity” exhibit that year.

UIC Graphic Design MFA Students on the Tzintzuntzan project in Mexico City 1999.

My approach to my professional projects could never be called “methodical.” It was to “jump into the middle and work toward both ends”—to start with a given or a known entity—a color, text, size, photo, etc, rather than an “Idea” and see where it leads. It is an approach that has naturally developed over the years, one that fits my personality and outlook on life.

In teaching design, results are not the important element. It is what the student discovers through working toward both ends. Comparisons of my professional work to that of the student work will show that the appearances are vastly different and individualistic, but what is not seen is that the steps, experiments, starting points and means of discovery are rela-tively the same.

In The Classroom and Beyond

Students of design need: —To be involved in projects that compel them to observe the world around them. —To go so deep into a project that they freely explore the outer limits. —To set the parameters of a project for themselves. —To be exposed to and be involved in vital community or international issues. —To work closely with other related and unrelated disciplines.—To be able to present their work in a clear, forceful and positive manner.

The usual so called “real world” project has too many limitations and too much emphasis on marketing objectives and established precedents to have much value.

These approaches to design education assume an involvement with upper level undergradu-ates and graduate students. Beginning design students have different needs which should be taught by professionals who know and love the basics of composition, color, typography and letter forms, and the essential technology by which our thoughts are realized. I have had the good fortune to work side by side with both types of design instructors at the University of Illinois at Chicago whose commitment to teaching was inspiring.

There is a special place in my heart for those students who over the years havedemonstrated a willingness to forgo sleep, nutrition and other necessities to create sensational project solutions.

Look for all of these points in the following examples of student work.

In 1987 my seven graduate design students at the School of the Art Institute had just completed their semester long project. With a week left before vaca-tion and I wanted to continue to interact with them. I had read in the morning paper about police in a Danish town who wanted to stop traffic from speeding on a nearby highway but they had no funds or enough police to patrol it. The police created lifesize cutouts of themselves and placed them along the

side of the highway in great numbers in the hope of fooling speeding drivers.I showed the article to the students and asked them each to interperet it in their own way. When I walked into class the following week I saw them at their desk, but they were cardboard cutouts with a note saying they were across the street having coffee and asked me to join them. I did, and we talked about personal duplication possibilities, among other things.

In 1988 The University of Illinois at Chicago asked if I wanted to be involved in establishing a graduate design program. Yes, I did! Part of my duties when I began teaching at UIC included serving as design director for Design Issues, an academic journal on design assembled by UIC faculty and published by MIT press.

The Fall 1990 issue was on “Educating the Designer.” Since I was immersed in that subject myself I wanted to use two of my students, Paulette and Godfrey. Godfrey appeared with his knee bandaged from an accident. It was the bandage that triggered my theme of relating parts of the students to the qualities I felt necessary in a designer’s education. MIT used the cover as a promotional poster to entice new subscrib-ers. Naturally, some design educators took offense at the concept and the image.

Allow unforeseen events to play a role, even possibly to determine the outcome.

UIC Student Project 1 Family Photos

Using a series of 12 photographs depict your family or a family member. Say something about them and present the photographs in a meaningful way.

Charles did nothing for two weeks into this project. When I confronted him he said he did not have a family. He lived with his aunt and three small nieces and did not even have a camera. I told him those were his restrictions and to deal with them to answer this problem.

The next week I didn’t see Charles so I wrote him off. At the final presentation Charles was there and told the class his story. He bought three disposable cameras and gave them to his nieces to make photographs. He had them developed, cropped them to emphasize mistakes that first time users make. Then he enlarged them and the return envelope to give the viewer the feeling of being a child when handling them.

A wonderful example of using what’s at hand in a highly creative, imaginative and intelli-gent manner.

UIC Student Project 2 Home to School

Visually document your trip from home to the university. Bring all your senses into play—sight, sound, smell, taste, touch.

This project demanded that students do some first hand, in depth, personal observation and translate their findings into visual elements. The posters from about twenty students were vastly different in concept, and exceution due to the personal nature of their situation. Lisa’s poster on the right contrasts photo-graphic motion of the subway train moving up and out of the top of the page with typo- graphic sounds of passengers, times and names of train stations along the route moving down and out at the bottom of the page.

UIC Student Project 3 Playing French Poster

The French Cultural Services in Chicago asked my class to design a poster for a series of French cultural events they were staging.

The posters were developed as a semester project and presented by each student to the French cultural attaché and visitors.

In a perfect world our visual work speaks for itself without any further action on our part. Until that day comes we must learn to speak up and point out its strengths and rationale for existence. Speaking positively and informa-tively about why things appear in your work the way they do is interesting to your audi-ence.

Be enthusiastic, the audience is with you. Be realistic, but imaginative.Be informative, but don’t overdo the detail.Become the expert on what you are pointing out in your work.

UIC Student Project 4 Fruits and Vegetables

After assigning projects with what I felt were too many guidelines and limitations, I decided to only as-sign a theme and let students decide the parameters, media, size and purpose. I opened it up more by having partners chosen at random. The students had to stick to the theme but what they did and who did what and for what purpose was up to them.

The theme was “Fruits & Vegetables.”

One of my favorite solutions was from a student who double majored in photography and her partner who worked after school in a crime lab.

They smashed fruits and vegetables, photographed them and prepared detailed descriptions and analysis of the nature of the “crime”. They presented these facts to the class by pinning them on a bulletin board, discussing the crimes and assigning teams of investi-gators from the class to go out and find the perpetra-tors.

A wonderful example of the method of presentation integrated with the nature of the subject matter!

.

UIC Student Project 5 Tzintzuntsan Pottery Project

Collaborative project with UAM in Mexico City and UIC in Chicago. Graphic and product design.

The UAM product design students de-signed a contemporary ceramic line of dinnerware for sale locally. My UIC stu-dents developed and designed a promo-tional program for international export. The students met and visited Tzintzuntzan where artisans create high temperature ceramic products.

The UIC students gave the name “Tzéna” to the Ceramic dinnerware which trans-lates as “dinner.” They used the Tz from the name of the village where the pottery originated.

Leaflets were designed to be printed in-expensively with a lighthearted mixture of Spanish/English.

Frank GehryPeels an Orange

UIC Student Project 6 Einstein’s Dreams

Having read and thoroughly enjoyed the book “Einstein’s Dreams” by Alan Lightman, I thought the descriptions of time in the book were ideal for my advanced typography students to use for the basis of typographic interpretations. I was later thrilled to see that a theater company in Chicago was pre-senting a play based on the book and that Alan Lightman would be at the opening.

I contacted the theater. They suggested we hang the student work in the lobby. We arranged for all sixteen students to attend the opening and to present a bound copy of their work to the author.

An enjoyable and rewarding integration and inter-appreciation of the arts for all.

UIC Student Project 7 Genesis

Read the first three chapters of Genesis.Visually relate an aspect of it to contem-porary life using Dürer’s “Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden” print.

This student made Dürer’s print into a kite with the thought that the creation concept as outlined in Genesis “would fly.” He also pointed out that the green tail (serpent) was the element that stabilized the kite and kept it from crashing.

It was thinking like this that inspired me to create my own interpretation of Genesis. Nine years later I published a book called “Adam’s Sketchbook” in which I imagined what Adam (who was visually inclined) was doing in the Garden of Eden while God was creating the animals.

The American Institute of Graphic Arts voted it one of the 50 best books of the year. (Following Page).

Adam. The World’s First Artist, Mathematician, Designer, Poet, Naturalist, Scientist, Linguist, Social Critic & Time Traveler.

AardvarkKatydidGnuDodoFlukeHedgehogCricketKinkajouCuckooCotimundiEgretAlewifeCicadaAukEmuKiwiCassowaryJackdawSkinkFer-de-lanceHippopotamusGeckoPorcupineWombatGnatCockatooIbisEarwigTickWapitiMosquitoIguanaYouyouPuduBaboonCivitOryxZooidWhydahNewtCoyoteUropygiFleaKakapoOxGibbonIbexChinchillaGiraffeSlugOkapiSmelt PeewitSquidJabiruPlatypusZebra

...and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. Genesis 2:19

Adam created many free-form images, not drawing anything that he saw, but rather forms he would like to see. The forms were spontaneous and fluid, yet revealed an awareness of underlying mathematical principles.

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9CHAPTER 2VERSE 19ADDENDUM

has directed Greiner Design Associates in Chicago since 1971, producing visual com-munications for some of the largest retail, industrial and cultural organizations in the country. Clients included: Abbott Laboratories, Borg Warner, JCPenney, The Museum of Contemporary Art, The Art Institute of Chicago, The Goethe-Institut, German Cultural Center of Chicago & New York. He has created graphic and signage programs for many of Chicago’s top architectural firms.

His work has won awards from the American Institute of Graphic Arts, The New York Type Directors Club, The Art Museum Association of America and The Printing Indus-tries of America. He previously served as executive designer at Unimark International in Chicago where he worked on identity programs for Ford Motors, JCPenney, and Memorex, with strategic marketing programs for Maison Blanche, Dayton/Hudson and Halle Brothers department stores. He has held positions as Art Director at N. W. Ayer in Philadelphia, Typography Director at D’Arcy Advertising in New York and Staff Designer at Geigy Chemical Corporation in Ardsley, New York. His book Adam’s Sketch-book, A Fable on Creativity was selected by the American Institute of Graphic Arts as one of the best designed books of the year in 1999.

John Greiner directed the department of visual communications at the School of the Art Institute from 1995 to 1998 and was professor of design at the University of Illinois at Chicago where he headed the MFA program in graphic design and taught a design seminar and senior graphic workshop. From 1988 to 1993 he served as graphics editor of the journal Design Issues. He has traveled and photographed extensively throughout Europe and Mexico.

John Greiner

Born, Vineland, New JerseyPhiladelphia College of Art (University of the Arts)Art Director, N.W. Ayer, PhiladelphiaGraphic Artist, Hdqtrs. 3rd Armored Division, Frankfurt, GermanyBasel School of Design, Basel SwitzerlandTypographic Director D’Arcy Advertising, New YorkStaff Designer, Geigy Chemical Corporation, Ardsley, New YorkFreelance Designer, New York Executive Designer, Unimark International, ChicagoGreiner Design Associates, ChicagoDirector of Graphic Design Dept; School of the Art Institute of ChicagoAssociate Professor, University of Illinois at Chicago

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