visual symbols: ancient and modern (Aki Nurosi)

This one kept us stumped for a long time. Too bad all we had to do was look on the back for the answers and do some googling. It’s a poster promoting a talk by Alvin Eisenman at Yale on Monday, January 19. But in what year? We wrote an algorithm that calculated every January 19th that fell on a Monday between 1957 (when Helvetica was was created) and 1990 (when Alvin retired from Yale). Then we got out our slide rule to confirm the metrics. Actually, all of that is lie. We just asked chat GPT for a list of years that fit the bill. So, we had a year, but no design credit. Now, this thing had been wrapped in plastic and cardboard for a zillion years. This morning as we prepared to photograph it, we unwrapped it noticed a name in pencil on the back: AKEFEH. In less than a dozen keystrokes we narrowed it down to RISD’s Aki Nurosi. We sent her an email about this, and she did not deny it was her work. (But she also didn’t remember it.) She graduated from Yale in 1980 and immediately went to work at the Yale Printing Service where this probably would have been designed. So, we’re calling it. We’re also calling it Wicked Rare.