Historical Function of a Poster? Announcement | Advertisement | Propaganda | Social Activism | Artistic Vehicle
1.
Posters for Public Announcement
Broadsides
Printed on one side only, these documents were used to issue public decrees, new laws and general announcements.
Large metal type called Fat Faces and wooden type Egyptian Slabs were used for bold headlines. Posters were assembled by printers who combined unrelated typefaces and sizes without
regard to design but to attract attention from a distance.
(left)
Declaration of Independence
by John Dunlap, a government printer and publisher in Philadelphia in 1776.
Advertising replaces Proclamation
During the Industrial Revolution posters become the major method of advertising goods. Here we see a lithographic poster of a modern woman's dream machine that "saved time and work."
2. Lithography
Invented in 1798 by German Aloys Senefelder, lithography is a process based upon the science that water and grease repel one another.
1. Draw on a prepared limestone with an oil based crayon
2. The stone is wiped with a chemical solution which causes the image to attract the greasy printing ink.
3.The stone is wiped with a solvent such as turpentine to dissolve the original drawing. A ghost image is left bonded to the stone.
4. Oil based ink is applied to the to the stone with a roller.
3. The Influence of Japanese Ukiyo-e prints
“Pictures of the floating world" or Ukiyo-e was an art form closely connected with the pleasures of theatres, restaurants, teahouses, geisha and courtesans. Many ukiyo-e prints were posters, advertising theatre performances and brothels, or idol portraits of popular actors and beautiful teahouse girls. The early woodblock prints were spare and monochromatic, printed in black ink only but later grew rich in color.
When Japan opened its borders in the 1850's, Ukiyo-e prints were exhibited in galleries in France and greatly influenced impressionist painters including Degas and Henri Toulouse-Lautrec.
4. Jules Cheret
France
Cheret’s "three stone lithographic process," was a printing breakthrough which allowed printers to achieve every color in the rainbow with as little as three separate lithographic stones — usually red, yellow and blue printed in careful registration. His early subject matter dealt mainly with the gaieties of Parisian night life in theatres and cafes.
By 1881, the profusion of street posters lead to a law which created official "posting places." Every poster required a tax stamp to indicate that a fee had been paid, based on square footage, for the right to post it.
Posters were so popular that they were stolen off of walls as soon s they were hung. The first group exhibition of posters, 1884 was followed by the first book on poster art 1886. "Cheret's recognition announced to Europe that the art of the poster has arrived" from Graphic Design a New History
The "Maitres de l'Affiche
Cheret used pretty young women to advertise retail products. These wasp waisted provocative beauties were named "Cherets.
5. Alphonse Mucha
Mucha was a Czech painter who moved to Paris where he found fame when he was asked to make a theater poster for the renowned actress Sarah Bernhardt in 1894. A brilliant series of lithographic prints followed.
Belgium poster designer Privat Livemont combines the romance of the Pre-Raphaelites and the sensuous style of Art Nouveau with the line and color of Japanese ukiyo-e prints. "An excellent example of female sensuality used in the service of commerce." (Laura Gold, Ladies of the Poster: The Gold Collection.)
6.Edward Penfield
American
Penfield, an art director of Haper's magazine was a prolific illustrator. Along with Will Bradley he brought an American spin to the European Style—and that spin did not include naked women. Quite the opposite, women wore high collars, were sporty and independent.
L'Aliment le plus concentré 1898
Henri Van de Velde
Tropon Poster 1898
Van de Velde was one of the originators of the style known as art nouveau. The curved line was the dominant theme in his architecture and furniture. This, his only poster design is described on the National Gallery web site. "It was created for the Tropon food company as part of a comprehensive design program, the first of its kind for a commercial enterprise. The rhythmic lines -- purely graphic -- appeared on everything from packages of powdered egg white to advertisements and the company's stationery." For more information about Van de Velde on the National Gallery web site...
"Art Nouveau began to lose its vitality in France with the departure of the three major posterists. Toulouse-Lautrec died in 1901; both Mucha and Cheret turned largely away from the poster and dedicated themselves to painting. Artists everywhere found new ways of expressing themselves. The Beggarstaff Brothers in England were the first designers to emphasize more than just the enlarged illustrations with text. They reduced the text to a minimum and designed large, strict compositions."
8.
Lucian Bernhard
The Sachplakat Poster
Germany, 1906
"The Priester Match poster is a watershed document of modern graphic design. Its composition is so stark and its colors so starling that it captures the viewer's eye in an instant. When the poster first appeared on the streets of Berlin, persuasive simplicity was a rare thing in most advertising: posters, especially tended to be wordy and ornate. No one had yet heard of its young creator, who, thanks to this poster, was to influence the genre of advertising know as the Sachplakat, or object poster." Quote from Steven Heller's profile on Bernhard on the AIGA web site
9.
Russian Cinema Posters
Stenberg Brothers* 1928
Russia
(offset lithography)
In Russia, political ideology caused avant-gardists' to reject fine arts. In a new Communist society "art for use" was in the service of the state. Key in the evolution of the poster was advertising (now a morally superior occupation with ramifications for the new society)
Vladimir and Georgii Stenberg were prominent members of this group. (*This is material quoted from the Museum Of Modern Art web site "Stenberg Brothers.") To read more...
10.
Herbert Matter, Swiss Tourist Posters
Switzerland, 1935 - 1936
"Herbert Matter studied at the Académie Moderne in Paris in the late 1920s before returning to Switzerland to design a series of Swiss travel posters using his signature photomontage technique. He arrived in the US in 1936, designing work for Museum of Modern Art , Condé Nast, the Guggenheim Museum, Knoll Furniture and the New Haven Railroad.
Matter’s advanced techniques in graphic design and photography became part of a new visual narrative that began in the 1930s, which have since evolved into familiar design idioms such as overprinting—where an image extends beyond the frame—and the bold use of color, size, and placement in typography. Such techniques often characterize both pre-war European Modernism and the post-war expression of that movement in the United States." (Source...Stanford University Library)
Paula Scher's homage to Matter in her 1984 Swatch Watch Poster is shown next to the original.
11.
Swiss International Style Emerged in Switzerland in the 1950s to become the predominant graphic style in the world by the ‘70s. Because of its strong reliance on typographic elements, the new style came to be known as the International Typographic Style.
The style was marked by:
1.) the use of a mathematical grid to provide an overall orderly and unified structure
2.) sans serif typefaces (especially Helvetica, introduced in 1961) in a flush left and ragged right format
3.) black and white photography in place of drawn illustration. The overall impression was simple and rational, tightly structured and serious, clear and objective, and harmonious.
The new style was perfectly suited to the increasingly global post- WWII marketplace.
The Swiss style was refined at two design schools, one in Basel led by Armin Hofmann (below is his poster) and Emil Ruder, and the other in Zurich under the leadership of Joseph Muller-Brockmann. All had studied with Ernst Keller at the Zurich School of Design before WWII, where the principles from the Bauhaus and Jan Tschichold’s New Typography were taught.
On the left is a poster by Armin Hoffman from the Moore College of Art & Design Galleries. Link here to Hoffmann's lecture delivered in connection with the inaugural exhibition of the Swiss Institute, featuring posters by Hofmann, New York City, May 8, 1986.
Professor Bez Ocko of Hofstra University curated The Swiss Poster: Art of Ten Masters. There are many historical and contemporary Swiss posters archived there...link here to the site.
12.
WWI Recruiting Soldiers
At the start of WWI in 1914 there was no draft for the British Army. To get men to enlist posters were used to inspire or shame men into joining up.
Recruiting the War-time Workforce
J. Howard Miller
By World War II, women were depicted as important contributors to the war machine, rather than passive women-folk waiting for the men to return. This iconic image of the American woman worker brought about an entire cultural shift for women in the workplace.
Photomontage
John Heartfield
Various methods can be used to combine two or more photographs into a singe image —several negatives (combination printing) or mulitple exposures. The term photomontage came from the German Dada at the end of WWI, most notably from the work of John Heartfield. He would cut and paste together different photographs often depicting his strong objections to Hitler and the Nazi Party.
15.
Lester Beall
Rural Unfication Project
Philip Meggs credits Lester Beall with "almost single-handedly launching the Modern movement in American design." He studied the dynamic visual form of the European avant-garde, synthesized parts into his own aesthetic and formed graphic design applications for business and industry that were appropriate, bold, and imaginative.
In his Rural Unification Posters his
"deceptively simple message is that rural life and American values are indistinguishable.
16.
Posters have been used to support the protests of disenfranchised women, blacks, Latinos, gays. native Americans and countless groups. They were especially abundant in the 1960's and 70's when artists would labor over silkscreens to produce strong color fields and bold type at low cost.
The Silence = Death poster
1986, Offset lithography
Act up AIDS activists
See also,The Art of Protest
Culture and Activism from the Civil Rights Movement to the Streets of Seattle)
Producer Andrea Marks, Professor of Graphic Design at Oregon State.
17.
Polish Political Posters
Post WWII — 1990
Freedom on the Fence is a documentary project about the history of Polish posters and their significance to the social, political and cultural life of Poland. Examining the period from WWII through the fall of Communism, Freedom on the Fence captures the paradox of how this unique art form flourished within a Communist regime. The documentary contains interviews with older and younger generations of poster artists, examples of past and current poster work, historic and current film footage of where and how the poster is viewed, and commentaries from both American and Polish scholars and artists on the significance of the Polish poster as a cultural icon.
Milton Glaser
In 1955, along with Seymour Chwast, Edward Sorel, and Reynold Ruffin, Milton Glaser cofounded the Pushpin graphic design studio in New York. The studio’s surprising style, which combined aspects of Victorian art, Arts and Crafts, Art Nouveau, and Art Deco with contemporary typography and illustration, “captured the imagination of the world through its refreshingly organic approach to design and illustration.” While at Pushpin, Glaser designed the incredibly popular poster for Bob Dylan’s 1967 album, “Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits.” At the time, Glaser was interested in Islamic miniatures and the psychedelic images emerging from the West Coast. Working from a photograph he’d taken of a striking sign in Mexico, Glaser designed the “Babyteeth” typeface used on the poster. The poster features Dylan's silhouette in black with his wildly dramatic hair looking exotic in electric colors. The expressiveness of the hair contrasts with the soft, geometric lettering, producing a sense of depth and vision that complements Dylan’s music.
Husband and wife, the two work to diminish the boundaries between graphic design and photography—creating collaged three-dimensional images influenced by cubism, technology and architecture. Go to their website to see an archive of their amazing collaborative work.
Ralph Schraivogel
Swiss Posters Today
In the early 1990’s, Swiss designers employed abundant visual effects in their poster production, dramatically different from the previous refined and rational Swiss style, thus enriching Swiss graphic design with a new, individual dimension. The experimental and independent approach to design employed by Wolfgang Weingart, was successfully adopted by a group of younger, talented graphic designers in the late 1990’s, such as Melchior Imboden and Ralph Schraivogel.
With new technologies dominating the scene, Ralph Schraivogel opts for a traditional creative approach through which he accomplishes visual creations in his posters that, in their final effect, approximate to digitally manipulated images.