A Brief History of the Poster: World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution
World War I meant a new role for the poster: propaganda.
Indeed, the war ushered in the biggest advertising campaign to date,
critical to the wartime communication needs of every combatant – from
raising money, recruiting soldiers and boosting volunteer efforts, to
spurring production and provoking outrage at enemy atrocities. America
alone produced about 2,500 poster designs and approximately 20 million
posters – nearly 1 for every 4 citizens – in little more than 2 years.
The lessons of brilliant American advertising in WWI were not
lost on the Bolsheviks, who turned to poster art to help win their civil
war against the Whites. Lenin and his followers proved to be the
pioneering masters of modern propaganda, and the poster became a
weapon which would be used throughout the century in both hot and
cold wars everywhere.
World War II and the End of Stone
Lithography
The poster played a large communication role in World War II,
but unlike World War I it shared the spotlight with other media, mainly
radio and print. By this time, most posters were printed using the mass
production technique of photo offset, which resulted in the familiar dot
pattern seen in newspapers and magazines. The use of photography in posters,
begun in the Soviet Union in the twenties, now became as common as
illustration. After the war, the poster declined further in most countries
as television became an additional competitor.
The last gasp of the classic age of the lithographic poster
occurred in Switzerland, where the government heavily promoted the
printing industry and poster excellence. The establishment of a
standard poster size and national kiosk system in 1914 was an additional aid.
Appealing to the Swiss sense of precision, the style which
developed during WWII and the early fifities in Basel was the Sachplakat,
or Object Poster Style. Delighting in making everyday objects into
giant icons, its roots go back to the Plakatstil of Lucian Bernhard
and the Surrealist movement. The style depended on spectacular Swiss
printing to create its wonderful trompe l’oeil effects. Visual elegance
was often matched by gentle humor. With the end of lithographic printing
in the ‘50s, Leupin, Brun and the other Basel Sachplakat artists turned
to a humorous style less reliant upon the rich color and textures of
lithographic printing.
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