Raster makes the invisible structure of great design visible, then lets you put your hands on it.

Every work in this collection was built on a structure its designer chose before choosing anything else. Raster shows that structure: eight masterworks of twentieth-century graphic design, each with the grid that generated it ruled over the artifact in red. Slide between structure and original, and the design explains itself.

Then compose. Each work opens in the playground with its own grid loaded and the original laid over your blocks like a tracing. You learn a grid the way its designer knew it, by working inside it.

The lines

The construction lines are measured. Each grid was fitted to a reproduction of the artifact itself: band edges sampled pixel by pixel, column rhythms matched, the Beethoven poster’s rings fitted to its own printed arcs. Where a construction is radial, the plate rules rings. Where a designer worked against the very idea of a system, the plate says only what is true: one axis, a baseline, and deliberate emptiness. The grids are reconstructions rather than the designers’ own drawings, and wherever they can be measured, they are.

Reproductions

Reproductions appear as educational references at study size; all works remain the property of their rights holders. Raster is not affiliated with the designers, estates, or institutions named above.