Plakastil
The tern Plakastil is German for poster style, it was a German design Movement which started in the 1906 by the artist Lucian Bernhard. Just like the Vienna Sucession the Plakastil style was a reaction against all the decorations and the curvilinear the Art Nouveau style had instead it was based on large simplified images with flat backgrounds and large bold lettering.
As one can notice the Plakastil style attracted many viewers with the bold typefaces that were incorporated and the colour combinations that were used were not seen in any other art movements. The style was more focused on geometrical forms and rectilinear rather then all those ornamentations that were used in the previous movements.
As one can notice the Plakastil style attracted many viewers with the bold typefaces that were incorporated and the colour combinations that were used were not seen in any other art movements. The style was more focused on geometrical forms and rectilinear rather then all those ornamentations that were used in the previous movements.
Plakastil movement employed:
- flat background colours
- large, simple images
- and product names
- Bold lettering
Plakastil was a design school that originated in Germany in the early 20th century. The meaning of the term Plakastil is poster style. The Plakastil movement was almost like the Vienna Secession and Scotland’s Glasgow school, it rejected the curvilinear in favour to seek functionalism. It all started with a poster design competition for the Preister Match Company, and Lucian Bernhard won the competition with a revaluating design. The poster features two large matches arranged simply against a dark background, with the company name staring decisively above the matches in black letters. Bernhard was a self-taught artist, and at that time he most likely did not realize that he a moved graphic communications one step further in the simplification and reduction of naturalism into a visual language of shape and sign the Bernhard's poster led to a revolution in graphic arts that dominated German advertising for the next decade. The popularity of Plakatstil design was assisted in large part by Das Plakat, a German magazine that showcased contemporary poster artists. Das Plakat was a lavish monthly journal that included numerous colour tip-ins and inserts of original prints. The magazine brought attention to the Plakatstil emphasis on flat colors and shapes it represented the next step towards the abstraction that would concern Modernist design. From this design aesthetic came a new form of advertising.
Lucian Bernhard is known to be the father of modern Advertising language the matches poster design catches the viewers attention in a instant in my opinion all this lays within the color combination that Bernhard used.
Lucian Bernhard Poster for Priester Matches Poster 1905
The poster design of the Matches by Lucian Bernhard has such a huge impact over the public and the artistic community that it eventually revolutionized the German Advertising and graphic design.
- The colour became means of the projecting a powerful massage with minimal information.
Lucian Bernhard poster for Stiller Shoes, 1912
- The advertising object is heavily outlined
- The outline is plunked down boldly on a flat colour background
- Bold text that is kept to a minimum
- The viewer’s eye is inevitably dawn to focus on the advertisement
Toulouse Lautrec had also started the process of The Beggerstaffs Brothers but had continued with Lucian Bernhard together they established the approach to posters by using flat colour shapes, the product name, and the image of the product and they repeated this process over and over for about two decades.
Hans Rudi Erdt
Erdt was another German graphic designer that worked with Bernhard, Erdt was another representative artist of the Plakastil movement.
The above images shows how well Erdt was able to apply Bernhard’s formula.
The Posters demonstrates:
- Flat background colour
- Large simple images
- Bold text that is kept to a minimum
Erdt uses the text simply to introduce a brand name with a sense that it is the essential part of the layout which is strikingly bold, the hand written typefaces are very elegant and the compositions are balanced and monumental. Erdt was a part of a generation of graphic designers who for the first time became specialized in commercial art around the late 19th century and the early 20th century. Erdt worked as a commercial graphic designer for brand such as Opel automobile and cigarettes such as Manoli and Problem. The posters of Hans Rudi Erdt are created by a highly simplified composition in which every detail has been carefully erased, and the placement of his enigmatic personalities, with their cynical, detached air about them.
War Posters
Lucian Bernhad Poster for Lon War Campaign
1915
Bearnhard adopted medieval approach in his poster such as the hand drawn red and black lithographic seventh loan war poster.
- A sharp militaristic feeling is amplified by the Gothic inspiration
War Poster by Abram Games
Poster by Joseph C. Leyendecker
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Ludwig Hohlwein
References
Philip B. meggs. and Alston W. Purvis.eds., 2012. Meggs’ History of Graphic Design. Fifth Edition. Hoboken Canada: John Wiley & Sons,Inc.
Philip B. meggs. and Alston W. Purvis.eds., 2012. Meggs’ History of Graphic Design. Fifth Edition. Hoboken Canada: John Wiley & Sons,Inc.
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