The "100 best posters of the year" refers to a selection of german posters from the previous
year that are submitted by their designers. The competition is organized by the VGD, the
Verband der Grafik-Designer e.V., and has a 34 year long tradition,
going back to a time when the two Germanies were still separated. It is open to professionals and students alike.
Some observations:
- This year the jury, or poster design in Germany, has taken a step in a new direction.
Pale colors, small formats, ambiguous content, unknown designers and clients, would describe my impressions
when walking through the exhibition. In fact, being rich and famous seemed to be
rather a handicap for winning a prize.
- The social net among the participants is knit loosely, especially between young and old. When asking
for subjects to which I could point my camera, I often heard "There is
Gunter Rambow, but I don't know all
these young people".
- Many young graphic designers told me that life is very hard for them, and
they are glad for the publicity they can get out of this competition. They keep the juries in their mind
as much as their client or the public when designing posters, and so the posters in the streets
look quite different from those in the exhibitions.
- Look at the extremes in technique that some designers went to:
Cornelia Hofmann painted
her poster with a bacterial solution on agar, waited a few days until the organisms had grown and took a picture.
Fuesti:Kuehn packed a saxophone into a bag and had it x-rayed at the airport baggage control, and
Christian Dworak's poster is made of detachable stickers.
Anyway, I enjoyed the show, especially the Wagenbreths, the people
and Berlin as much as I did last year.
Buy the catalogue !
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