Michiel Schuurman’s posters—near-sighted legibility and far-sighted readability

The highly ambitious exhibition, “Graphic Design: Now in Production” recently completed its run (1.22.12) at Walker Art Center. Included in the show was an intriguing triptych set of posters by Dutch graphic designer, Michiel Schuurman. The pieces were designed over a two-year period from 2007–08 for “HorseMoveProjectSpace” in Amsterdam.

Schuurman’s poster designs cleverly synthesize and magnetize the graphics so that the viewer is able to read the information through accessibility of the text. As an analogy—Schuurman’s posters are characterized by near-sighted legibility and far-sighted readability. The poster series promote the “Horse Move Project”, which was an art collaborative project implemented in 2007-08.

The Mediamatic website states this about the project:

The “HorseMoveProjectSpace” is an initiative of three young artists who organized and developed collaborative art projects and exhibitions. They have utilized an abandoned space next to the Post CS building in a, site-sensitive, site-specific way. The project space is correlated with the Stedelijk Museum, W139, and Mediamatic.

For the next three months artists will be invited (the invited artist invites the next artist) in an ongoing exhibition named The Horse Move Project. The project outcome is an additive process, which creates an amalgamation from the exhibited artwork(s) left by the previous artists.

Schuurman’s website interestingly conveys a summary of his work:

[Michiel] is a Dutch graphic designer working in Amsterdam. Schuurman’s personal work specializes in typography and poster design, which often boasts a rather maximalistic approach. His practice of combining bright colors, warped glyphs, harsh perspectives, and acidic patterns creates some awfully intriguing eye-candy, which he often screen prints himself.