Plakate - Posters
A selection of more than 400 works by first-rate designers
Dieter Urban
Novum Press / F. Bruckmann, Munich (D) (1997);
319 pages, more than 400 color reproductions, 23 x 15 cm, softcover;
ISBN 3-7654-2765-9; DM 68.00 (about 38 US$); in german and english
$$$
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The cover shows a theater poster by Johannes Graf
You may know the worlds oldest graphic design magazine Novum from Germany, the successor of Novum Gebrauchsgraphik, which in turn succeeded Gebrauchsgraphik, founded in 1927. If you do, you are certainly familiar with its longtime editor-in-chief, Dieter Urban, the author of the present book and one of the most universal and prolific persons in the field.
Starting out as a typographer's apprentice forty years ago, he still is an active graphic designer (his poster for the Kieler Woche 1999 was shown at the Brno Biennale 1998). A professor of graphic design theory, and former owner of an advertising agency, he has published a series of books in the past years on different subfields of graphic design, like typography, signs, trademarks, or advertising campaigns. All of them are intended as resource books and practical guides for graphic designers.
In this volume on posters, Urban presents the work of about thirty designers and a few advertising agencies. His favorites, judged by the number of pages devoted to them, are Joao Machado (30 pages), Niklaus Troxler (24), Stephan Bundi (18), Shigeo Fukuda (16) Mendell & Oberer (16) and Holger Matthies (14), Seymour Chwast (12), Gunter Rambow (12) and Takenobu Igarashi (12). Many of the posters are well known classics, select from the last ten years. I am especially pleased about the rich material from Machado, as his designs are not widely available elsewhere, and the same is true for Stephan Bundi or Holger Matthies, for example.
Stoppt die Folter (Stop torture) 1985, Stephan Bundi Poster for Amnesty International |
Joao Machado Cartazes 1986, Joao Machado Poster for a poster exhibition |
Elements moins performants (Subjects with lower performance) 1991, Alain Le Quernec Theater poster |
Think before you're thought 1995, Gunter Rambow Poster against violence |
A rich pictorial source and handy reference of the state of the art in poster design!