young designers of the late 1980s seemed to parody their modern teachers

katherine mccoy poster for cranbrook's graduate design program in design, 1989

Cranbrook the school was founded in the era of experimental art education. 

architect eerno saarinen described the Cranbrook model as "self education under good leadership," where students and instructors would learn together, without hierarchy. 

in the 1970s and 1980s, katherine & michael mcCoy had a compelling belief in theory as a basis for her practice. the program was organized around experimentation in the studio, with minimal structure or assignments – a return to the Art Academy's original method. there were no deadlines, papers, or finals, other than the expectation of new work in weekly critiques and semester-end self-evaluations and extended bibliographies. a final degree project and thesis were required in the last semester. 

let's untangle mccoy style: 

*the four basic nouns and verbs at each corner of the lower filed are related by dotted lines (above),

*there's a bit of the grid system of the swiss international typographic style + Neurath's pictorial stats,

* juxtaposed verbs are stacked in the center, 

*collaged designed surfaces, rendering an almost illegible field,

* a new density overload, call it 1980s maximalism,

* language seems to unlock the complexity of the design.