Summer 2022

The spaces between

WhiteSpace

By April Greiman. Design schematic by Laurie Haycock Makela. Published by April Greiman, $55.
WhiteSpace

April Greiman’s photography book WhiteSpace conjures the ephemeral into a tangible form, fixing digital pixels alongside the contours of female voices. The off-white iridescent cover presents a title that floats off the page, casting a shadow above a list of 25 contributors active in the fields of art, design, architecture and poetry. Each woman’s name is introduced by an underscore character. The underscore was used in early computer files as a substitute when a whitespace character was not permitted. Greiman’s WhiteSpace draws heavily on the character, placing it in titles, section headers, running footers and image captions. The effect is bold, literally underlining the invisible. The stylistic use of punctuation throughout the publication is evidence of the personal computer’s ongoing influence on Greiman’s art and design practice.

Greiman, perhaps best known for her approach to digital collage (consider her six-foot poster Does it make sense? for the Walker Art Center’s Design Quarterly in 1986) and experiments with new technologies in the 1980s, has long been recognised as a pioneering artist and design educator whose work spans media and disciplines …

Cover of WhiteSpace with list of collaborators. Top. Spread from WhiteSpace featuring April Greiman’s overlapping photos of US-90, Valentine, Texas (left) and the Chianti Foundation, Marfa, Texas.

WhiteSpace

Kathleen & Christopher Sleboda founders of Draw Down Books, Boston and Connecticut

Read the full article in Eye no. 103 vol. 26, 2022

Eye is the world’s most beautiful and collectable graphic design journal, published for professional designers, students and anyone interested in critical, informed writing about graphic design and visual culture. It is available from all good design bookshops and online at the Eye shop, where you can buy subscriptions and single issues.