You don't have to give up your
pencil when you switch to computer design," declares April Greiman. "The
Mac's just another pencil!"
For more than 15 years the Los Angeles-based artist-entrepreneur has used
design tools ranging from pencils and paint to still cameras and videos.,"
Greiman avers. "I asked myself, within the restrictions of the technology,
how can we push it the other way, so it's obviously desktop published, but
elegant?"
Her solution: to use bit-mapped fonts developed by Emigre magazine (see "Border
Crossings" in the January issue). "They make a strong statement
that this is desktop publishing," Greiman says. "I'd rather go with
something eccentric -- but beautifully eccentric."
Greiman proved just as unpredictable when Design Quarterly gave her an entire
issue to display her work. "Rather than do yet another retrospective,
I wanted to make it a personal piece," she explains. "I decided
there could be nothing more personal than a nude, digitized portrait of myself."
Now Greiman plans to take her Design Quarterly package one step further‹by
placing her picture and time line on a number of electronic bulletin boards
for others to toy with. "I want to see how they're changed," she
explains. "I'll publish whatever comes back."
"In traditional design you learn from accidents: You spill paint and
come up with something better than what you intended," she observes.
"The same thing happens on the Mac: You go into Fat Bits, see a pattern,
and say, 'Ah, that looks better than the original!"' Clearly, April Greiman
aims to break new ground‹by accident or design.
