March 2 History of GD Chapter 14

Modern art movements affected the poster designs throughout the twentieth century. One major influence was the Beggarstaffs made up of James Pryde and William Nicholson. Opening an advertising studio these two would create poster designs that involved cutting pieces of paper and moving them around to paste onto a board. They ignored the trend that continued from art nouveau and created powerful colored shapes and silhouettes. Plakatstil, which is the reductive, flat color design school, affected Lucian Bernhard who created a poster with words and imagery working hand in hand. He used simplicity and reduction of naturalism to created such a simply design involving one word and two matches. The characteristics of his work include flat background color, large simple imagery, and the product name. During World War I, posters were important to advance communication since electronics were not yet advancing. Posters were created to use as a propaganda device, as well as honoring soldiers and creating a cult around the nation's leaders. One leading Plakatstil designer was Ludwig Hohlwein, who collaborated with the Nazi's during WWI as he created posters coinciding with Hitler. It was not until the 1920s that the term art deco evolved. It is used to identify popular geometric works. One major artist was Cassandre, who used bold, simple designs in two dimension that are composed of simple bold colors. As this time period went on, posters and other works were more simplified and unified. Space was brought back into design and bold type was used to display messages.

I find the Alfred Leete poster for military recruitment very interesting. It states that "Briton wants you" and has a military man pointing his finger at you. This is very interesting because we have the American version of this poster. Created by James Montgomery Flagg, this same poster was created except using Uncle Sam on the poster. This poster is known all over America and is still seen as a powerful tool for recruiting people to fight in war. But, I would never have known that this design was taken from some other country.

I feel that Bernhard made a good effort at simplifying imagery and really emphasized reduction. But as you look at the posters throughout the chapter you will see how they start very simple, but as you get farther along in the years, they simplicity begins to diminish again. This is more of an observation as to a question. I just thought that they were all for simplicity (example is figure 14-52).