Up Against the Wall: International Poster Design

Contemporary posters are vehicles of commerce, cultural manifestations and a means by which attention may be drawn to alternatives to mainstream thinking on a broad range of subjects. That the poster is all of these things points to its versatility and its enduring nature.

The volume considers poster design in order to document and analyse the intentions and the working methods of a number of poster designs selected from a broad international spectrum. Research methods involved a curatorial approach to selecting posters and other material for inclusion. A number of designers were also interviewed to uncover the background to the development of their finished designs and to present the findings about ‘process’ in a manner which revealed a range of strategies such as how designers communicate a message over a sustained period of time, how posters can be used to launch or refresh a brand identity, how the limits of reprographics can be challenged, and how designers can create posters on a collaborative basis.

The volume opens with an overview of poster strategies that have involved designers in thinking “beyond the page” and is followed by a number of case studies of the work of poster designers representing a range of approaches including Peter Bilak, Pascal Colrat, Masuteru Adba, Sebastian Kubica, Kenzo Izutani, David Tartakover, and 8vo. A number of posters are considered in detail such as Tartakover’s sequence ‘30 Years of Occupation’ (1997) which marked the 30th anniversary of Israel’s occupation of the Gaza Strip in which a series of over-printings and the overlaying of red crosses created a sense of claustrophobia and oppression.

The co-authors also co-designed the volume. The design overcame the problems of poster size reduction by showing posters in their entirety.
Citations include Martin Soar’s doctoral thesis and www.posterpage.ch

Spanish co-edition: Nuevo Diseno de Carteles, Spring 2003. ISBN 987-668-409-4