POSTERS: IMAGE + TEXT

THE POSTER IN WESTERN
GRAPHIC DESIGN

As a single sheet,
unfolded and printed only on one side,
it is the simplest medium for graphic design.
It exemplifies its essential elements—alphabet
and image—and its means of reproduction.

In “Graphic Design: A Precise History,” Richard Hollis
breaks down graphic design practice into three categories:

1. Identification: symbols, logos, etc
2. Information & Instruction: diagrams, maps, etc
3. Presentation & Promotion: posters, ads, etc, where it
aims to catch the eye and make its message memorable.

As graphic design, posters belong to the category of
presentation and promoting,
where image and word need to be economical,
connected in a single meaning,
and memorable.

Jules Chéret, poster, “L’Aureole Du Midi.” Pétole de Sureté, 1893.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, poster, \"La Goulue au Moulin Rouge,\" 1891. Shapes become
symbols; in combination, these signify a place and an event.

Alphonse Mucha, poster for Job cigarette papers, 1898. Mucha delighted in filling the
total space with animated form and ornament.

Maxfield Parrish, poster for Scribner’s magazine, 1897. Parrish created an elegant land
of fantasy with his idealized drawing, pristine color, and intricate composition.

Alfred Roller, poster for the fourteenth Vienna Secession exhibition, 1902. Dense
geometric patterns animate the space.
Will Bradley, poster for Bradley: His Book, 1898. Medieval romanticism, Arts and
Crafts-inspired patterns, and art nouveau are meshed into a compressed frontal image.

Alfred Roller, poster for the fourteenth Vienna Secession exhibition, 1902.
Dense geometric patterns animate the space.

Alfred Roller, poster for the sixteenth Vienna Secession exhibition, 1902. Letters were
reduced to curved corner rectangles with slashing curved lines to define each character.

Berthold Löffler, poster for a theater and cabaret, c. 1907.
Masklike faces were simplified into elemental linear signs.

Josef Hoffmann, Wiener Werkstätte exhibition poster, 1905. A repetitive blue geometric pattern was
created by a hand-stencil technique after the lettering and two lower rectangles were printed by
lithography. This lettering was combined with other patterns in an advertisement and other posters.

Ilya Zdanevitch, poster for the play Party of the Bearded Heart, 1923.
Vitality and legibility are achieved using typographic material from over forty fonts.

Käthe Schmidt Kollwitz, “The Survivors Make War on War!” poster, 1923. This powerful antiwar
statement was commissioned by the International Association of Labor Unions in Amsterdam.

Lucien Bernhard, poster for Priester matches, c. 1905. Color became
the means of projecting a powerful message with minimal information.

THE IMAGE

An image is a powerful experience that if far from
being inert–a simple depictor of objects or places or people.
It is a symbolic, emotional space that replaces physical
experience (or the memory of it) in the viewer’s mind during the
time it’s being seen.
(from Samara text)

Image Modes

Mediation

LITERAL

ABSTRACT
the medium is the message

I L L U S T R AT E D I M A G E & T E X T

TEXT AS IMAGE

P H O T O + I L L U S T R AT I O N