Post on 23-Oct-2014
Pictorial Modernism
As Modern Art continued to influence posters and advertising, there was a rise in a new kind of visual communication.
In some ways there is a continuation of form and expression. But the pictorial modernists enter new territory with their contributions.
Pictorial Modernism
The Beggarstaffs
James Pryde and William Nicholson were brothers-in-law who had been close friends since art school.
Respected academic painters, they chose to adopt pseudonyms to protect their reputations as artists when they opened an advertising studio.
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The Beggarstaffs
The Beggarstaffs, poster for Kassama corn flour, 1894.
Their straightforward style was firmly established in one of their earlier posters.
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The Beggarstaffs
Their distinctive cut-paper style challenged viewers to participate and decipher the subject.
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The Beggarstaffs
The Beggarstaffs, poster for Don Quixote, 1896.
Cut paper shapes produce a graphic image whose simplicity and technique were ahead of their time. Although the Beggarstaffs were amply paid for their work, the poster was never used.
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The Beggarstaffs
The Beggarstaffs, poster for Harper’s Magazine, 1895.
The viewer brings closure by combining fragments into a symbolic image.
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The Beggarstaffs
Poster for W.C. Hardy's production of Hamlet, 1894
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The Beggarstaffs, unused poster design now known as “The Coachman,” 1896.
It was not uncommon during the 1890s to design posters that could become advertisements simply by inserting the client’s name.
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The Beggarstaffs
The Beggarstaffs, poster for Robespierre, 1896.
As with the design for Don Quixote the actor Sir Henry Irving was not pleased with his image and rejected the poster.
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The Beggarstaffs
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William Nicholson, illustration from An Alphabet, 1897.
The reductive simplicity of Beggarstaff posters is maintained.
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Plakatstil
The reductive, flat-color design school that emerged in Germany early in the twentieth century is called Plakatstil (poster style).
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Plakatstil
Lucien Bernhard, poster for Priester matches, c. 1905.
Color became the means of projecting a powerful message with minimal information.
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Plakatstil
The Priester Match poster is a watershed document of modern graphic design, or rather, proto-Modern design.
Its composition is so stark and its colors so startling that it captures the viewer’s eye in an instant. Before 1906, 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
Lucian Bernhard, poster for Stiller shoes, 1912.Against the brown background, dark letterforms, and black shoe, the inside of the shoe is intense red and the front of the heel is bright orange.
Lucian Bernhard, poster for Manoli, 1910.Bernhard designed a number of posters for Manoli cigarettes. The name Manoli was derived from the name of the company owner’s wife, Ilona Mandelbaum, in reverse.
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Lucian Bernhard
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Lucian Bernhard
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Plakatstil
Hans Rudi Erdt, poster for Never Fail safes, 1911.
The military bearing of the security guard reflects the reliability of the company.
Hans Rudi Erdt, poster for Opel automobiles, 1911.Pose, expression, and clothing signify the affluent customer for this automobile.
Julius Gipkens, poster for Heinemann’s wicker furniture, undated.The dog and checkered cushion suggest hearth and home.
Julius Klinger, poster for Die Lustige Woche, Wochenschrift für Humor und Kunst,(The Merry Week, Weekly Publication for Humor and Art), 1907.
Julius Klinger, poster for Hermanns and Froitzheim clothing, 1910.
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Lucian Bernhard, Flinsch Type Foundry, Bernhard Antiqua, 1913.
Bernhard’s typefaces are characterized by rational and terse designs.
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Lucian Bernhard, trademark for Hommel Micrometers, 1912.
Every shape and form in this figure is derived from Hommel’s products.
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Lucian Bernhard, trademark for Manoli cigarettes, 1910.
A simple M in a circle suggests the minimalism of future trademarks.
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Lucian Bernhard
1915Poster for a war-loan campaign.
A sharp militaristic feeling is amplified by the Gothic inscription, “ This is the way to peace – the enemy wills it so! Thus subscribe to the war loan!”
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The Poster Goes to War
The poster reached the zenith of its importance as a communications medium during WWI (1914-18).
Printing technologies had advanced rapidly, while radio and other electronic means of public communications were not yet in widespread use.
Governments turned to the poster as a significant medium of propaganda and visual persuasion.
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The Poster Goes to War
The posters produced by the Central Powers (led by Germany and Austria-Hungary) were radically different from those made by the Allies (France, Russia, Great Britain, and eventually the US).
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The Poster Goes to War
In Austria-Hungary and Germany, war posters continued the traditions of the Vienna Secession and the simplicity of the Plakatstil pioneered by Bernhard.
Words and images were integrated, and the essence of the communication was conveyed by simplifying images into powerful shapes.
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The Poster Goes to War
Julius Gipkens1917
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Hans Rudi Erdt1916
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Otto Lehmannundated
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The Allies’ approach was more illustrative, using literal rather than symbolic imagery to address propaganda objectives.
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The Poster Goes to War
British posters stressed the need to protect traditional values, the home, and the family.
Perhaps the most effective British poster of the war years is the widely imitated 1915 recruiting poster by Alfred Leete.
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The Poster Goes to War
Saville Lumley1914
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1915
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James Montgomery Flagg1917
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J. Paul Verrees1918
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1917
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A leading Plakatstil designer, Ludwig Hohlwein of Munich began his career as a graphic illustrator with work commissioned by Jugend magazine as early as 1904.
The Beggarstaffs were his early inspiration; but later on, he began to apply a rich range of texture and decorative patterns to his images.
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The Poster Goes to War
A leading Plakatstil designer, Ludwig Hohlwein of Munich began his career as a graphic illustrator with work commissioned by Jugend magazine as early as 1904.
The Beggarstaffs were his early inspiration; but later on, he began to apply a rich range of texture and decorative patterns to his images.
Pictorial Modernism
The Poster Goes to War
A leading Plakatstil designer, Ludwig Hohlwein of Munich began his career as a graphic illustrator with work commissioned by Jugend magazine as early as 1904.
The Beggarstaffs were his early inspiration; but later on, he began to apply a rich range of texture and decorative patterns to his images.
Pictorial Modernism
The Poster Goes to War
In the posters he designed for WWI, Hohlwein began to combine his simple, powerful shapes with more naturalistic imagery.
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The Poster Goes to War
Ludwig Hohlwein1940s
As the Nazi dictatorship consolidated its power and WWII approached, Hohlwein moved toward a bold imperial and militaristic style of tight, heavy forms and strong tonal contrasts.
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The Poster Goes to War
Ludwig Hohlwein1940s
In one of his last Nazi posters, a stern and somber soldier appears above a simple question, “And you?”
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The Poster Goes to War
Ludwig Hohlwein
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Postcubist Pictorial Modernism
Art Deco
The term art deco is used to identify popular geometric works of the 1920s and 1930s.
To some extent an extension of art nouveau, it signifies a major aesthetic sensibility in graphics, architecture, and product design during the decades between the two world wars.
Streamlining, zigzag, moderne, and decorative geometry – these attributes were used to express the modern era of the machine while still satisfying a passion for decoration.
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E. McKnight Kauffer
Kauffer’s famous 1918 Daily Herald poster showed how the formal idiom of cubism and futurism could be used with strong communications impact in graphic design.
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E. McKnight Kauffer
For the next quarter century, a steady stream of posters and other graphic design assignments enabled him to apply the invigorating principles of modern art, particularly cubism, to the problems of visual communication.
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E. McKnight Kauffer
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E. McKnight Kauffer
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E. McKnight Kauffer
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E. McKnight Kauffer
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E. McKnight Kauffer
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A.M. Cassandre
Cassandre’s bold, simple designs emphasize two-dimensionality and are composed of broad, simplified planes of color.
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A.M. Cassandre
By reducing his subjects to iconographic symbols, he moved very close to synthetic cubism.
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A.M. Cassandre
His love of letterforms is evidenced by an exceptional ability to integrate words and images into a total composition.
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Abram Games
In England, Abram Games extended the philosophy and spatial ideas of post cubist pictorial modernism through WWII and well into the second half of the twentieth century.
He began his career on the eve of WWII and produced educational, instructional, and propaganda graphics during the war.
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Abram Games
“the message must be given quickly and vividly so that interest is subconsciously retained.
The discipline of reason conditions the expression of design.
The designer constructs, winds the spring. The viewer’s eye is caught, the spring released.”
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