Wednesday, March 11

We had another presentation in class today. Victoria talked to us about pictorial modernism and the style of the posters at the end of the eighteenth century through the nineteenth century. World War 1 and Lucian Bernhard were the main influences of the time. Bernhard was the first to start simplifying the advertisement poster with just the product and the product name. He used flat colors and bold designs to get the product across. We spent some time in class talking about the different poster styles of the Central Powers and the Allied Powers during the war. The Central Powers used the bold colors and simple design with a central figure and old style typefaces, while the Allied Powers had very realistic, detailed and emotional posters. A popular theme we discussed was how each side was trying to get people to donate to support their soldiers and what a poster today would have to look like. This was interesting to discuss because there were two main kinds of ideas where we could use a graphic picture to show what's going on without support or the good that the troops are doing so that people want to donate to a good cause. Though we came up with two different ideas between four groups, we all agreed that we would need a realistic image, like a photo, with emotion in order to make it relateable, which is similar to what the Allied Powers were doing then. How long was it until America picked up on the sort of designs that the Germans were using, or did we ever really?