This poster was included as a pull-out in issue ten of Emigre Magazine. Emigre magazine was an alternative-culture graphic-design magazine launched by Rudy VanderLans and Zuzana Licko in 1984. Emigre styled itself as the ‘magazine that ignores boundaries’. It challenged the traditional rules of graphic design, questioning conventional ideas about layout and legibility and making pioneering use of digital technology.

Zuzana Licko began to use Apple Mackintosh computers as soon as they were introduced in 1984 and was one of the first type designers to explore their potential. Rather than imitating existing forms of type on the computer, Licko created coarse bitmapped fonts that expressed a new computer aesthetic.

Emigre ten was entirely edited, designed and produced by the graduate students at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, Unites States, which ran an innovative graphic design course. The issues reflected on an exchange program between Cranbrook students and Dutch graphic design studios and focussed on the differences between American and Dutch graphic Design.