The Complaint Department

Power of Design 2014: Complaints is a gathering of designers, writers, and thinkers for a series of events and exhibitions at The Wolfsonian museum in Miami Beach from March 22-24. The poster exhibition portion of the event, entitled Complaints! An Inalienable Right, is curated by Steven Heller and showcases posters by major designers airing their own complaints. A new poster in the series is posted each day on the blog for the exhibition, a sampling of which can be seen here with captions from the blog. I especially love Milton Glaser's sentiment that "Certainty is a closing of the mind."

Jeff Scher is filmmaker, animator, and teacher whose work appears frequently in the New York Times. He teaches at New York University and the School of Visual Arts in the MFA graphic design program. He notes that his poster "is about global weirding-fueled rising sea levels and how it endangers everything coastal, including New York City. It is a subject that Hurricane Sandy made personal when it destroyed my coastal Brooklyn Studio."

Viktor Koen is on the faculty of the School of Visual Arts (SVA). His work has been exhibited in galleries and museums nationally and internationally, and his images regularly appear in publications including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Nature magazine. The bottom of this poster, Koen explains, adds "insult to injury" through "very unreliable science." It lists the percent of adults per state in the last year "with significantly damaged looks due to direct smoke exposure of their face."

Milton Glaser is among the most celebrated graphic designers in the United States. You've seen his work: he designed the iconic I (heart) NY logo in 1976. His many accomplishments include: one-man shows at the Museum of Modern Art and the Georges Pompidou Center; the National Medal of the Arts award; and lifetime achievement awards from the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum and the Fulbright Association. He co-founded Push Pin Studios and New York Magazine. In 1974, he opened Milton Glaser, Inc., where he continues to produce a prolific amount of work. Of this poster, he comments: "I don't know where it came from, but some years ago I read or heard the phrase,  'Certainty is a closing of the mind.' I quite agree."