Posters are a daily visual ritual, whether you live in kinetic urban sprawl or a vast rural environment. From movies to sports and politics to public health, posters are everywhere. Their presence does not discriminate because, well, they work.
It’s one of the original mass communication devices, though author Lars Dybdal says it’s perhaps the medium creative professionals know the least about historically. But Dybdahl, head of the Danish Museum of Art & Design Library, is seeking to end the lack of knowledge with his hardbound contribution on the subject, The Global Poster.
With a selection of 260 posters, The Global Poster reveals the image-rich development and design of the poster medium—from the breakthrough period of color lithographs in the 19th century to present day digital techniques.
The book is a worldview emphasizing trends and phases of the poster as a potent visual communication form. With its specter of themes and angles, it explains and shows in full-color the movements in the medium’s almost all-embracing field—including advertising, politics, and art.
The Global Poster outlines poster graphic design trends, including Victorianism, art deco, modernist avant-garde, constructivism, psychedelic style, and postmodernism. Dybdahl serves it all, but the book is no academic chore. It reads smoothly and the visuals alone make the book worth a gander.
It should also be noted that the majority of the posters reproduced are part of the poster collection at the Danish Museum of Art & Design Library in Copenhagen. To purchase this book, click here.
