Digital+Storytelling

media type="file" key="PhotoStory0.wmv" width="300" height="300"Lisa Steiner Digital Story "Powerful Posters"

This is my digital story about the powerful visual commentary of posters. You know, like those things you used to hang on your bedroom wall of your favorite rock star? Well, this may give you a slightly different perspective on the topic. For example, when you see a new poster or placard, say when you’re walking through campus, or downtown, or on the transit, it can really grab you emotionally because of its’ beautiful or striking impact. Or it can make you cringe and want to look the other way. Sometimes it takes a moment to “get” what the poster trying to say, or it just doesn’t make sense, or you don’t really notice it. Whatever the reaction, poster art reflects changing trends in graphic design that illustrate our cultural, political and social perspectives. These images and words are a part of us, found world wide and in every language and style imaginable. This short presentation shows you some examples of different posters from the last hundred years or so; all of these images are from the Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Online Catalogue Collection. These images are completely free for private non-commercial use. The medium of poster art is still important even now in the 21st century because the motives behind the posters are as viable as ever, that is an attempt by artists and designers to offer visual solutions to world problems. Posters are a form of public awareness, advertising, protest, education, or propaganda intended to get our attention. Obviously there’s a lot of competition in this digital media driven age, but as you can see these posters are not like magazine ads or commercials; they are more sophisticated and express an idea or belief on a higher level through graphic design. In other words, poster art is social commentary in a visual way.

Historically, what we term posters, began appearing in the latter part of the nineteenth century, although written posted bills were around long before that. This is when chromolithographs began being printed in mass production paving the way for the modern poster. A chromolithograph is a full color lithographic print, which was a real innovation because it was the first time a color print could be reproduced. You can imagine, this must have been eye catching for the citizens of early twentieth century Paris to suddenly see colorful posters like this one advertising a bicycle displayed everywhere, circa 1900. Posters soon gave artists a new way to earn money, and many painters took advantage of the new medium which helped it grow in popularity. Today, in addition to lithography, posters are screen-printed, or printed digitally.

Here is a Spanish war poster that translates as “What are you doing to prevent this”. This next one from 1918 shows a soldier on horseback carrying the Slovak flag; clearly both of these have a pretty strong political message. The next four posters are from the Library of Congress Work Projects Administration (WPA) poster collection. The WPA was formed in the 1930’s to create jobs and the Federal Art Project was a part of it designed to offer employment to out-of-work artists and to help bring art to the average American. What a cool way to get people working! These are a few of the over 900 posters created under this program. As you can see, subject matter, bright colors, strong contrast, and different styles of type are combined for maximum impact. In this last group are more recent examples and like the others, they use text or images or both and are meant to be displayed in a highly visible public place. I think that a well designed poster really is an effective way to communicate, what do you think? These are all good illustrations of human rights, hunger, health, education, tourism, war, music, theater, the environment, sports and politics.

In conclusion, these are just a few of the posters from the Library of Congress website. I highly recommend that you check it out yourself if you want to see more. It’s fun to look at all the beautiful poster art, and I think that for each of us there’s a poster that we can relate to or that reminds us of something close to our heart. Also if you want to learn more, Colorado State University is hosting the Colorado International Invitational Poster Exhibition which is held every two years. This is a prestigious event showcasing new posters from around the world. This year it runs through October 14, 2011 and you can see the actual posters at the university which is best, or view them online. It’s a great way to find out about the artists and designers of today and what they are saying to us through their powerful posters.

Citations: 1. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs online catalog, []

 2. Colorado State University Libraries, International Poster Collection,

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