Exhibitions

How Posters Work

May 8, 2015 – November 15, 2015
Poster, Addo-X, 1958, Gift of Anonymous Donor. 1994-109-7.

Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
2 East 91st Street
New York, NY

Design Process Galleries

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Featuring nearly 125 works from Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum's permanent collection, the exhibition shows how dozens of different designers—from prominent pioneers like Herbert Matter, Paul Rand, Philippe Apeloig and M/M Paris, to lesser-known makers—have mobilized principles of composition, perception, and storytelling to convey ideas and construct experiences.

The exhibition features 14 principles of how designers look at the world: focus the eye, overwhelm the eye, use text as image, overlap, cut and paste, assault the surface, simplify, tell a story, amplify, double the meaning, manipulate scale, activate the diagonal, make eye contact, and make a system.

Related 224-page catalogue