Dear N,
It’s gotten hot outside. The kind of sticky summer heat that makes me think about pasta salad, iced coffee, and of course, my favorite poster.
It’s probably unsurprising to you that I have a favorite poster. It’s the Sweet Corn Picnic Poster designed by Stephen Frykholm for Herman Millers annual company picnic in 1970. The entire series is fantastic, bold picnic design that makes me feel like summer when I was kid, when summer meant not having responsibilities and spending time outside. My favorite is always the corn poster which was the first of the series in 1970. It became so popular that Frykholm was tasked with designing a poster for the picnic each following year.
Herman Miller is of course a place that values good design, they sell mid-century modern furniture including the beloved Eames Lounge Chair.
The corn poster is a bit funny, but I also think it’s one of the most fantastic pieces of design. The conversation between the corn kernels and the teeth is so strong. It’s simple and would read well even from across the street. The boldness of the graphic draws you in, literally by bringing the viewer close to the subject through its zoomed in perspective.
I don’t know where I first saw the Sweet Corn Picnic Poster, probably while lusting after the Eames lounge chair online or in a magazine, but I haven’t been able to get it out of my head since.
Without thinking too much about it, one thing that will always attract me to a piece is a visibility of medium. In other words, I like that it looks like a print poster. Perhaps it makes more sense to discuss this quality with other mediums, visible brushstrokes make oil painting identifiable, grain and noise suggest analog film, and swaths of flat color point to printing. The Sweet Corn Picnic Poster is only 3 colors, great for simple and cheap printing, and the design lets the graphic elements be large and take over the entire poster while the text is contained in one tooth.
Frykholm began his graphic design career before computers became the staple tool of the medium. His process often still begins with an analog approach to design. The picnic posters are silkscreen printed, and in a video about the making of them, Frykholm says, “I like the smell of the inks, cutting the stencils, the saturation of the color. It’s the physicality.”
The physicality of the work of printing has always fascinated me as well. The idea of production and reproduction as art. Pieces like posters, photos, and prints existing as part of an edition appeals to me. I think when you see Frykholm’s picnic posters, you can see their roots in analog processes. The Sweet Corn poster, as well as the others, can easily be understood as beginning from collage.
Seeing as two of my primary interests are art history and graphic design, and as a young person born into a world where computers were already absurdly common in all things, the pre-computer analog design processes feel a bit romantic to me. Paper, scissors, glue, markers, and a T-square sprawled out on a cutting mat call to me more than an open Illustrator file ever could.
I think I ended up drawn more into art history than art making is in part because of my preoccupation with process. Like Frykholm, I appreciate the physicality of making. Aside from my habits of collection, I like understanding how things come to be. I like printmaking and photography because they inherently include process. Painting and drawing are enjoyable and interesting, and there are any number of approaches to be taken with either medium, but for me, nothing beats the rigidity of printing. Now that’s not to say there’s not room for, or that I don’t have an interest in experimentation. Deviation from the standard practice often gets you the most appealing results, but you must have an understanding of the base process in order to manipulate it to make something new.
Before wrapping this up, I have to mention another favorite Frykholm Picnic poster. Seven Layer Salad, from the 1982 picnic. A classic picnic food that doesn’t necessarily lend itself to poster design but Frykholm was able to take each element and create a sort of pattern of it. He once again brings us in close to the subject of the poster, which when printed large could give us the impression of being a spoon on our way into the dish. Frykholm achieves this effect and creates these patterns by dicing up his ingredients and putting them on a copy machine. Scanners and copiers are perhaps my favorite design tool, especially when used in this way with three dimensional objects that probably have no business being put on Xerox glass. (Have I shown you my own phone cord copier experiments?)
Stephen Frykholm was hired as an in house graphic designer at Herman Miller and is responsible for some really incredible work there. Every time I find myself at a picnic enjoying a hot dog, I think of his posters.
This summer is for bold graphic design, corn on the cob, and picnics with friends.
Sweatily,
Em
All image rights to Stephen Frykholm and Herman Miller.