For this week’s survey, we are talking about colour. One of the biggest things that I want to focus on would be the Plakatstil or Sachplakat poster style of Russia. “Plakatstil” is defined as “poster style” in German. This style came about after younger artists searched beyond the current Victorian, Art Nouveau, and Arts and Craft styles.
The whole movement had started with the 15 year old Lucian Bernhard and an exhibition. Bernhard went to the “Munich Glaspalast Exhibition Of Interior Decoration” once and felt the experience of, as he describes it “walking drunk with colour”. When Lucian Bernhard had made his first real poster in the style of Plakatstil, for the ‘Priester’ (1906) match company for a contest, it was a shocking difference compared to the other posters of the time. One thing to note as well was that the judges at first had discarded the poster and thought that the design was bizarre, however when the sales manager of the Berlin’s leading proto-advertising agency and poster printer saw Bernhard’s poster, he thought it was genius and named it first prize. This is because before this, simplified posters were an oddity and rarely used, the amount of text was also quite different in comparison, due to the fact that other posters tended to use way more text in their posters compared to Bernhard’s who uses barely any words in his.
The style came out of a rejection of medieval poetry and complex patterns as the new century approached. The Plakatstil style was the beginning of modern graphic design, in which they emphasized on more symbols and shapes. Some key aspects of the style would be the bold, straight fonts and simplified designs, the subject matter was also slightly more detailed while shapes and objects that aren’t the focus are simplified. The point of Plakatstil in the end was to have a standard that presents a smooth product or image to the target audience. The simplified idea of this poster made it very advertisement friendly and therefore became standardized.
Sources:
- https://ericcraps.wordpress.com/2019/01/22/plakatstil/
- https://dylanspiteri.weebly.com/blog-posts-about-graphic-design-artists/plakatstil-german-posters-1905-1915
- http://historiadesigneteoria.blogspot.com/2013/02/plakatstil.html
- https://jennrichardsart.wordpress.com/2014/07/27/history-of-art-movements-plakatstil/
- http://guity-novin.blogspot.com/2010/05/chapter-31-german-plakatstil-movement.html#Ten