PLAKATSTIL
PLAKATSTIL CONTENTS
Where It Started
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Lucian Bernhard
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Emil Cardinaux
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Plakatstil In War
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Ludwig Hohlwein
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The Graphic Solution
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Lucian Bernhard, Adler Typewriters, 1909
Lucian Bernhard, Bosch, 1914
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Where It Started In the early twentieth century poster designers’ objective was to communicate with the general public. “They walked a tightrope between the desire for expressive and symbolic images on the picture plane on the other.�(Phillip Meggs, History of Graphic Design, Sixth Edition, p. 297) Pictorial Modernism is an expression of what it is been published and seen, later influenced by cubism and constructivism. Europe was focusing on word and image in posters. These works were simple but strong that targeted a specific market. From here the Plakatstil poster style was born. Plakatstil poster style also known as sachplakat, began in the early 1900s which emerged in Germany. This style started with Berlinear Lucian Bernhard in 1906. The Plakatstil style consists of bold lettering, flat colors and simple central images. In this style the objects and the shapes are simplified having the focus be on the central image. Very different from the other art styles and movements from before. Movements such as the Art Nouveau.
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Lucian Bernhard Lucian Bernhard was influential and helped create the design style Plakatstil. He was born on March 15, 1883 in Stuttgart, Germany. During the first half of the twentieth century he was a graphic designer, type designer, professor, interior designer, and an artist. Bernhard saw an advertisement for a poster contest sponsored by Priester Matches and decided to enter. Berhard’s “first design was a round table with a checker tablecloth, an ashtray holding a lighted cigar, and a box of mathches.” (Phillip Meggs, History of Graphic Design, Sixth Edition, p.299) He had painted some dancing girls in the background but then ended up removing them. After trying several different layouts, he finally decided to make his design very simple by only using the word Priester and a pair of matches. This type of simplicity in posters was rare in most advertising before the year 1906. Posters then had more words and were busier. Bernhard’s design won and it became the now famous Priester Matches poster, which influenced generations of poster advertising. Bernhard kept using the same approach when creating other posters such as Manoli Cigarettes in 1910 and Stiller Shoes in 1912. This poster style of using flat color shapes, image and name is a great example of less being more.
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Lucian Bernhard, poster for Stiller shoes, 1912.
Lucian Bernhard, poster for Manoli, 1910.
Lucian Bernhard, poster for Priester matches, 1905.
Lucian Bernhard, poster for Priester matches, 1905.
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Emil Cardinaux, Zermatt poster, 1908.
Emil Cardinaux, Zermatt poster, 1908.
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Emil Cardinaux Plakaststil had ignored the complexity of Art Nouveau and used a more modern look in poster art. In Switzerland, there was an artist named Emil Cardinaux who also designed posters. Born in 1877, Cardinaux was a Swiss graphic designer. He tried to follow the political ideals of Switzerland. He believed that the main characteristics of democracy in Switzerland is the ideals of country, family, home, order and political independence. We can notice these characteristics being informed in his posters. Emil Cardinaux, Winter in Switzerland, 1921
Emil Cardinaux, Affiche: Schweizerische Alpenposten, 1923
Emil Cardinaux was a landscape painter, he then absored art ideals from artist Ferdinand Hodler. In the year 1904 he was introduced to Johann Edwin Wolfensberger a lithograph priner. He then began doing poster design where he created the first Sachplakat Swiss poster. This 1908 Zermatt poster shared many of the same Plakatstil characteristics. The poster contains a quiet lavender background as the sky, with several mountains, and below only a few words. It is simple but done in a way that catches the viewers’ attention and gets their point across. He eventually designed more than one hundred posters promoting Swiss tourism.
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Jesse Willcox Smith, Poster for the American Red Cross, 1918
Saville Lumsley, Daddy, what did you do in the Great War?, 1915
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Plakatstil In War Printing technologies advanced rapidly during the World War I (1914-18), while electronic means of communication such as radio did not. The government used posters as a “medium of propaganda and visual persuasion” (Phillip Meggs, History of Graphic Design, Sixth Edition, p. 303) during the war. They needed support and to recruit armies and knew that this was a good way to accomplish that. In Austria Hungary and Germany, the war posters continued the simplicity of the Plakatstil. “Words and images were integrated, and the essence of the communication was conveyed by simplifying images into powerful shapes and patterns.” Ludwig Holwein as well as Lucian Bernhardwas was a leader of the Plakatstil style. Julius Klinger, Poster for Germany’s eighth bond drive, 1917
Ludwig Hohlwein, Und Du?, 1932
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Ludwig Hohlwein Ludwig Hohlwein was born on July 26, 1874 in Wiesbaden, Germany. In 1906, he left architecture and began to focus on graphic design. Hohlwein started as a poster artist and was inspired by The Beggarstaffs brothers where he began to reduce his images to flat shapes. He developed his unique style which did not have much change over the next years. He also played with light and shade to define his compositions. His compositions were of photographic qualities. He “applied a rich range of texture and decorative pattern to his images,” such as in his poster for men’s readymade clothing in 1908, unlike Beggarstaffs and his rival Bernhard. In this poster, we can see he adds different patterns using straight lines to the men’s coats, giving it a more interesting look. Holwein was a very popular artist between both World Wars. During World War I, he designed posters with his simple shapes but with naturalistic imagery. In the year 1914 Hohlwein designed a Fund-raising poster. He used a red cross as a graphic symbol and a wounded solider as a pictorial symbol. These two things combined made the poster have emotion, power, and strong visual impact. He then made billboards for the war and accepted commissions from the Nazi regime. “In 1931, he refused the offer to emigrate to the United States. Instead joined the Nazi party in 1933.”
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Ludwig Hohlwein, poster for men’s ready-made clothing, 1908.
Ludwig Hohlwein, fund- raising poster, 1914.
Ludwig Hohlwein was born on July 26, 1874 in Wiesbaden, Germany. In 1906, he left architecture and began to focus on graphic design. Hohlwein started as a poster artist and was inspired by The Beggarstaffs brothers where he began to reduce his images to flat shapes. He developed his unique style which did not have much change over the next years. He also played with light and shade to define his compositions. His compositions were of photographic qualities. He “applied a rich range of texture and decorative pattern to his images,” such as in his poster for men’s ready-made clothing in 1908, unlike Beggarstaffs and 11
Lucian Bewrnhard, Manoli Dandy, 1913
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The Graphic Solution Beginning with artist Bernhard in 1905; influencing many other artist and then having the War use the plakatstil style for their communications needs. Works that have flat colors and minimalism, but are strong and influential to generations in poster advertising. Pictorial Modernist graphics focused on word and image, making it one of the most long-lasting currents of graphic design in the twentieth century. Plakatstil; less is more is a graphic solution to communication problems in World War II as well as after.
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Bibliography Phillip Meggs, History of Graphic Design, Sixth Edition “Lucian Bernhard.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 20 Oct. 2017, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucian_Bernhard. World War I Poster, www.csun.edu/~pjd77408/DrD/ Art461/LecturesAll/Lectures/Lecture06/WWIposter. html. “Chapter 31 - The German Jugendstil and Plakatstil Movements.” A History of Graphic Design, guity-novin.blogspot.com/2010/05/chapter-31-german-plakatstil-movement.html. jenniferrichards1997. “History Of Art Movements: Plakatstil.” JenniferRichards.GraphicDesign, 27 July 2014, jennrichardsart.wordpress.com/2014/07/27/ history-of-art-movements-plakatstil/.
Colophon Written and designed by Ana Lopez Text set in Garamond; titles and subtitles set in Futura Condensed ExtraBold. Digitally printed at the University of Texas at El Paso
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