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- 2. The Beggarstaffs Harper’s Magazine, 1895Kassama corn flour, 1894
- 3. Beggarstaffs posterTypical poster of the era
- 4. Lucian Bernhard Stiller shoes, 1912 Priester matches, c. 1905
- 5. Hollerbaum & Schmidt Julius Gipkens Julius Klinger
- 7. Bernhard Typefaces & Trademark Designs Hommel Micrometers Manoli cigarettes
- 8. Switzerland & Sach Plakat Emil Cardinaux, Zermatt poster, 1908
- 9. Sachplakate Niklaus Stoecklin, Bi-Oro poster Herbert Leupin poster for Die Weltwoche, 1949 Otto Baumberger, poster for the PKZ department store, 1923
- 10. The Poster at War
- 11. War Posters of the Central Powers Lucian Bernhard, poster for a war-loan campaign, 1915
- 12. Julius Klinger, poster for Germany’s eighth bond drive, 1917
- 13. War Posters of the Allied Forces
- 16. Jesse Willcox Smith, poster for the American Red Cross, 1918 J. Paul Verrees, poster promoting victory gardens, 1918
- 17. Ludwig Hohlwein
- 19. Ludwig Hohlwein, “Und Du?” (And You?) poster, 1932. Ludwig Hohlwein, poster for the Deutsche Lufthansa, 1936 Ludwig Hohlwein, concert poster, 1938
- 20. Spanish Civil War Posters Arturo Ballester, “Hail to the Heroes,” poster, c. 1937 Martinez Ortiz, “Discipline,” poster, c. 1937
- 21. Art Deco E. McKnight Kauffer, poster for the London Underground, 1930 E. McKnight Kauffer, poster for the London Underground, 1930 E. McKnight Kauffer, poster for the Daily Herald, 1918
- 22. A.M. Cassandre A. M. Cassandre, poster for the Paris newspaper L’Intransigeant, 1925
- 23. A. M. Cassandre
- 24. A. M. Cassandre Typefaces Bifur Acier Peignot
- 25. Jean Carlu, Vanity Fair cover, 1930 Paul Colin, travel poster for Paris, 1935
- 26. Austin Cooper
- 27. Joseph Binder, poster for the Vienna Music and Theater Festival, 1924 Abram Games, poster to recruit blood donors, c. 1942
- 28. Heinz Schulz-Neudamm, cinema poster for Metropolis, 1926
Editor's Notes
- The modern-art movements and the communication needs of World War One affected the approach to poster design. The shift from Naturalism to a simplified visual language of sign and shape that had begun with Toulouse-Lautrec, was continued by James Pryde and William Nicholson, during their brief advertising career as the Begarstaffs.
- The Beggarstaffs introduced a technique, later called collage, in which flat shapes of color were cut out, resulting in sensitive edges “drawn” with scissors, and then assembled into a composition. Incomplete shapes created implied lines that engaged viewers while they deciphered the image.
- Many typical posters of the late 19th century still followed an illustration and design sense based on naturalism. The Beggarstaffs approach seems vastly different in contrast, with it’s bold, graphic style.
- The work of Lucian Bernhard inspired the reductive, flat-color design approach that emerged in Germany in the early 20th century, and was known as Plakatstil, or “poster style.” Bernhard’s approach incorporated a flat background color, a large simple image, and the product name. Color became the means of projecting a powerful message with minimal information.
- Berlin based lithography firm Hollerbaum & Schmidt signed Bernhard and six other young designers to exclusive contracts, including Julius Gipkens and Julius Klinger, who had been associated with the Vienna Secession, and Hans Rudi Erdt.
- Hans Rudi Erdt’s posters for Neverfail, and Opel motorcars demonstrate how well he applied the Bernhard formula.
- Bernhard also designed typefaces and trademarks. His first typeface, for Berthold Type Foundry in Berlin, was based on the sans-serif lettering style used in his posters. In this trademark design for Hommel Micrometers, in 1912, every shape and form in this figure is derived from Hommel’s products. His trademark for Manoli cigarettes, 1910, is a simple M in a circle suggesting the minimalism of future trademarks.
- In Switzerland, which has long been a popular vacation spot, travel posters filled a natural need. The poster of Zermatt, designed by Emil Cardinaux, the first modern Swiss poster, shared many characteristics with Plakatstil.
- A style known as Basel realism was advanced by Niklaus Stoeklin, Otto Baumberger, and Herbert Leupin, whose Sachplakate, or Object Posters, were characterized by a simple layout with a hyperrealistic image and minimal text.
- The poster was an important means of communication during World War 1 (1914-1918). Radio and other means of electronic communication were not yet widespread, and the poster served as a major tool for propaganda and visual persuasion. Posters were used for recruitment, boosting morale to maintain public support for the war effort, fundraising to collect money to finance the war, public support for conservation and home gardening to offset shortages, and assailing the enemy for its barbarism and threat to society.
- War posters of the Central Powers (led by Germany and Austria-Hungary) continued the traditions of the Vienna Secession and Plakatstil. Words and images were integrated, and the essence of the message was conveyed by simple images defined by powerful shapes and patterns. Such as this Lucian Bernhard, poster for a war-loan campaign, 1915. The clenched fist in medieval armor and blackletter typography captured the ancient Germanic spirit and stirred national pride.
- Julius Klinger’s 1917 poster for Germany’s 8th bond drive, expressed complex ideas in simple pictographic symbols, including arrows piercing a dragon and the numeral eight. The eight arrows piercing the dragon remind citizens that their gifts have helped wound the enemy.
- The Allied Forces posters were more illustrative in design, and used literal, rather than symbolic imagery. British posters stressed the need to protect values, the home and the family.
- The most effective British poster was the 1915 recruitment poster by Alfred Leete, showing Lord Horatio Kitchener, the British Secretary of War, pointing directly at the viewer and saying “Your country needs you.” This poster was widely imitated, most famously by James Montgomery Flagg, who created an American version in 1917. The “Uncle Sam wants you for the U.S. Army” poster was one of the most reproduced posters in history—more than 5 million copies were printed.
- Joseph C. Leyendecker was the most popular American illustrator between World War One and the early 1940’s. He created a canon of idealized physical beauty in the mass media and combined common visual symbols such as the flag and the Statue of Liberty, to promote patriotism.
- American posters honored soldiers and created a cult around national leaders or symbolic figures, as well as emphasizing the public’s contributions, such as the poster for the American Red Cross, by Jesse Wilcox Smith.
- The posters of Ludwig Hohlwein, a leading German Plakatstil designer, straddled the line between the symbolic posters of the other Central Powers’s graphic designers and the more literal pictorial posters of the Allies.
- His initial inspiration was the Beggarstaffs, but unlike the Beggarstaffs and Bernhard, he applied texture and decorative pattern to the shapes of his images and incorporated bold, sans-serif type, which sometimes became part of the image.
- Hohlwein later introduced gradation and tone to his simple, powerful shapes, making them more naturalistic. The evolution of his work coincided with Hitler’s rise to power, and Hohlwein’s reputation was seriously tarnished by his collaboration with the Nazis.
- In Spain, a civil war arose in 1936 and posters played an important role in spreading political propaganda. Republican unions, representing communists and anarchists, commissioned posters to communicate their ideas. Poster compositions featured bright colors and heroic figures. Artists referenced the contemporary avant-garde, including cubism and constructivism. Notice the similarity between Ballester’s poster and the previous Lufthansa poster by Hohlwein.
- After World War One, cubist ideas inspired a new direction, often referred to as Art Deco—a term used to identify popular geometric works of the 1920s and 1930s. The influences included Cubism, the Bauhaus, The Vienna Secession commingled with de Stijl and suprematism, as well as Egyptian, Aztec and Assyrian motifs. Edward McKnight Kauffer was one artist who played a major role in this movement.
- A. M. Cassandre also played a major role in defining the Art Deco approach. He had an exceptional ability to integrate powerful symbolic images and hand-drawn, sans-serif lettering to achieve a unified composition and concise method.
- Cassandre also designed typefaces for the Deberny & Peignot foundry, including Bifur, Acier, Noir and Peignot.
- Other illustrators and designers of note include Jean Carlu, who made a dispassionate, objective analysis of the emotional value of visual objects, and Paul Colin, who explored simultaneity by overlapping images to make two things into one.
- Austin Cooper applied cubist rhetoric and geometric shape and color in posters for the London Underground.
- Joseph Binder reduced natural images to basic forms and shapes. Abram Games extended the philosophy and spatial ideas of post-cubist pictorial modernism in the educational, instructional and propaganda graphics he produced during World War II.
- Modernist pictorial graphics in Europe focused on the total integration of word and image, which became one of the most enduring currents of 20th century graphic design.