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Wired Magazine: Selections from the Permanent Collection of Architecture and Design
December 19 - March 10, 1998

A selection of evocative opening spreads from Wired magazine, an innovator in high-technology print and digital media, is on view at SFMOMA this winter. The magazine layouts by internationally renowned graphic designers, printed with twenty-eight colors and often using metallic inks, were originally seen in issues of Wired magazine from 1993 to 1997 or in the Japanese or British editions of Wired. Organized by Curator of Architecture and Design Aaron Betsky, the exhibition features works from SFMOMA's permanent collection, which contains both printed and electronic examples of such digital designs.
Erik Adigard
Wired 2.09
1994
Collection SFMOMA
Gift of John Plunkett and Barbara Kuhr
(photos courtesy of Wired)











"Since 1993, Wired has been a prophet of the electrosphere," states Betsky. "It has also put a face to that nebulous realm through the design of its magazine, books, and websites. Wired magazine has defined the appearance of digitally produced media to a general public."

Nowhere is the message of that medium more clear than in the opening spreads Wired's Creative Directors John Plunkett and Barbara Kuhr have commissioned for each issue from some of the most innovative and accomplished graphic designers in the world. Each of the two to three spreads that precede the main contents page of the magazine illustrates a quote from one of the issue's main articles. Just as the quote encapsulates the central message the magazine wants to convey, so the images on Wired's opening spreads define the character of that issue. Sometimes they offer literal illustrations of the words; at other times they deepen their impact by floating evocative yet elusive imagery behind the quotes.
  Erik Adigard
  Wired 1.01
  1993
  Collection SFMOMA
  Gift of John Plunkett and Barbara Kuhr
  (photos courtesy of Wired)




 
By relying on the work of a changing cast of graphic designers, Plunkett creates an always surprising visual display. Designers have used strategies that range from "morphing" or computer manipulation to scanning directly from television screens to show how the electronic world can create a continually changing and highly unstable array of images. Collage has been a favorite way of organizing these graphics, with fragments of different kinds of images or typefaces intersecting one another. Some of the highly singular compositions gain their inspiration from product or corporate symbols and the history of designs for political propaganda. Other designers have concentrated on the iconic power of abstract images that flash an instant sensation to us -- the visual equivalent of a soundbyte -- before we go surfing to the next channel, site, or printed page.





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