BLOG 6 eye Magazine Cover

This is from the cover of the of eye magazine which launched in 1991 by Rick Poyner as a forum for graphic designers and typography.  This cover appeared in 1993 and was designed by Poyner himself.  I was really attracted to the overlapping of the outlined letters in primary colors on the black background.  It is interesting that if you really look you can find a bit of a letter - like the serif of a lower case, small point-size "p" in red and trace the letter through the jumble of "p's."  The composition also has a three-dimensional quality to it because of all of the overlapping within each of the letters and even across the letterforms.  Also adding to the three-dimensional quality is the white "t" that looks like it has been spun about its vertical axis.  Very cool effect.  I can't imagine how many typefaces are used to create this piece and I really can only indentify one - the large, white blocky "y".  I think it is something like hodge 06_65. 

The composition of the piece is very chaotic yet it is well balance  - the random swirl of letters are balances by the strong, bright-white eye (title) in the upper right-hand corner.  The typeface for the title is Helvetica.  The cover is also strangely unified by proximity and color.  The letters creating the word "type" are literally right on top of one another and overlapping one another.

I generally prefer a clean, simple design but somehow this caught my eye.  Sorry about the quality of the scan but this was a rather small picture in the center binding of a very large book!

Source: Feiedl, Friedrich, Ott, Nicolaus, Stein, Bernard, Typography:
           An Encyclopedic Survey of Type Design and Techniques
           Throughout History, Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers,
           Inc., New York, NY.