NPQ, Summer 1994 

BACK STORY: The World Wide Web was starting to have a major impact on everything we saw and read. The pace at which we were seeing imagery and accessing information was increasing exponentially compared to anytime in human history. Everything was being blurred and chopped up and spit out. We were now, for the first time, able to choose our own news, rather than to rely on the limited news sources previously available. This is how the design and concept came into being for “Republic of the Image.”

I started by photographing my own computer screen, which I had laid out with historical and present day imagery, just like the imagery we were accessing on the Web. I created two separate layers of color, one cyan and one magenta. These were the pure forms of the colors used in the CMYK printing method. I rotated one of the layers to give the feeling of movement and blurring. Finally, I chose the typeface Bodoni, because it is very upright and precise, with a big variation between the thick and thin strokes. I then redrew the font for the headline to look like it went through a blender. The intention was to give the cover a feeling of a sort of controlled chaos.