Amber Houbara
- Jul 20, 2020
- 3 min read

Research point - Posters

Updated: Jul 24, 2020

Posters have a long and rich history documenting everything from boxing matches to Bollywood films, the Soviet Revolution to punk, encouraging young men to join the army to persuading women to buy bras.

There are many collections in books in museums and galleries and on the internet.

Find out more about your own particular areas of interest.

Make notes in your learning log.

I really am interested in poster design, I actually have a board of Poster design I am keeping and saving all my favorite design inspiration on Pinterest.

To add to that, I really like the vintage poster design and from a young age were growing up with some of them hanging in my parent's house.

A Board I have of Posters Design Inspiration

A Board I have of Vintage Posters I like

The History of Poster Design

I have read this article about the history of poster design learning -

1880 - 1895: The Birth of the Lithographic Poster - Cheret's"3 stone lithographic process
1890 - 1900: The Belle Epoque & Art Nouveau - Toulouse-Lautrec and Alphonse Mucha as leader of Art Nouveau
1900 - 1914: The New Century & Early Modernism - Leonetto Cappiello "he focused on creating one simple image, often humorous or bizarre, which would immediately capture the viewer's attention and imagination on a busy boulevard."
1914 - 1919: World War I & the Bolshevik Revolution - propaganda derived designs
1919 - 1938: Between the World Wars: Modernism & Art Deco - "In this machine age style, power and speed became the primary themes. Shapes were simplified and streamlined, and curved typefaces were replaced by sleek, angular ones that would reflect the jazz age. Ever eclectic, strains of Art Deco would also manage to incorporate the exotic arts of Persia, Egypt and Africa. " / "The term Art Deco is derived from the"Decorative Arts" Exposition of 1925 in Paris, which proved to be a spectacular showcase for the style. In Paris, the caricature style ofCappiellogave way to the geometric, intellectual images ofA.M. Cassandre, who popularized air brush techniques that lent a machine-like surface to his images. His towering posters of the Normandie, Statendam and Atlantique ocean liners became icons of the Industrial Age.
1938 - 1950: World War II & the End of Stone Lithography - "By this time, most posters were printed using the mass production technique of photo offset, which resulted in the familiar dot pattern seen in newspapers and magazines. The use of photography in posters, begun in the Soviet Union in the Twenties, now became as common as illustration. After the war, the poster declined further in most countries as television became an additional competitor."
1945 - 1965: Post-World War II & Mid-Century Modernism - "the arrival of television, jet travel and global brands fueling the way." / "A veritable "poster boom" occurred in the early 1950s, driving forward two distinct styles, one consumer and one corporate. The first, which we have labeled the '50s Style, was brightly colored and whimsical, while the second, called theInternational Typographic Style, was more rational and orderly."
1965 - 1972: The Sixties & the Art of Rebellion - "A new illustration style, one which borrowed freely from Surrealism, Pop Art and Expressionism, was more relaxed and intuitive and the first wave of a Post-Modernist sensibility. A famous example was Milton Glaser's1967Bob Dylan record album insert." / "The excesses of the drug culture and political alienation led to a brief but spectacular PsychedelicPoster craze in the U.S., which recalled the floral excesses of Art Nouveau, the pulsating afterimages of Op-Art, and the bizarre juxtapositions of Surrealism. And theFrench May Day protests generated a school of propaganda poster that harked back to theSovietposter and cartoon art."
1970 - 1989: The Seventies & Eighties - Post Modernism - "By the earlyEighties, the style began to give way to the Post Modernists, who sought to break the formal and dogmatic rules of the Swiss Style." / "A young teacher in Basel named Wolfgang Weingart led the palace revolt which ushered in today's predominant graphic style loosely known as Post Modern design. Weingart experimented with the offset printing process to produce posters that appeared complex and chaotic, playful and spontaneous - all in stark contrast to his elders' teachings. Weingart's liberation of typography was an important foundation for several new styles, from Memphis and Retro, to the advances now being made in computer graphics."
1990 on: The Poster Today - "Although its role is less central than it was 100 years ago, the poster will evolve further as the computer and the worldwide web revolutionize the way we communicate in the 21st century."