Book Review: Poster Collection 23: In Series

One after another

The latest poster book from the Zurich Museum for Gestaltung looks at poster series. Forty-two or so are considered and they start with the brilliant Gerstner+Kutter designed work for the Swiss National Zeitung newspaper in 1960. Luckily the same capital letter works for both words (Nation and Zeitung) if the rest of the letters are turned ninety degrees. I thought the four posters for the newspaper are probably the best posters in the book and still fresh and exciting today.

The ninety-six pages are in two sections separated by Fabian Wurm's essay in English. The first group are mostly straightforward posters with a clear message using graphics plus type or just type. There are six type only ones from Georg Staehelin for a Basel museum where he uses Akzidenz Grotesk in large sizes and they work so well because of the simplicity of the typography. Work from other well known designers like Michael Engelmann, Joseph Muller-Brockmann (he obviously had to be included) Otl Aicher, Almir Mavignier and Oliviero Toscani (for Benetton) make up most of the first section.

I thought the second section of posters perhaps more problematical. There are some from years ago and they obviously work well but they are mixed with designs created in the last two decades. These look much more visually complex and possibly almost anti-poster if one assumes that any poster should communicate its information quickly and with clarity. Examples from designers like Elektrosmog, Cyan, Ruedi Wyss, Polly Betram & Daniel Volkart and Muller+Hess seem to be deliberately confusing. Maybe this was a clever visual trick from these designers to force anyone who looks at their designs to spend time working out what posters are saying.

The 203 posters in the book are all in color and well printed on a matt art paper. Each has a caption with the designer credit, client and date. This is poster book twenty-three and the series is building into an excellent overview of poster art, primarily from Switzerland and Europe.

Poster Collection 23: In Series is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN)

The brilliant National Zeitung newspaper posters from 1960.

The work of Georg Staehelin using only Anzeigen Grotesk Bold.

What is one to make of these? Almost anti-poster in the presentation.

Left: Maurice Beck's strong graphic statements for the London Subway system in 1832. Beck went onto design the classic subway map.

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