- In the 1920s, designers and artists at the Bauhaus
were working to reduce form to only its functional elements.
At the beginning of the 1930s in Paris,
the idea of purity and geometric forms found a voice.
However, a softer, more elegant approach emerged.
It is during this time that we see the rise
of the poster as a great art form.
Economically, France was not devastated
by World War I like Germany.
The effects of the Great Depression were present,
but the situation was not as dire
and harsh as post-war Germany.
Luxury goods, travel, and entertainment continued to have
a strong market, which of course leads to advertising.
Printing technologies had also improved
since the age of Cheret and Toulouse-Lautrec.
Now a designer could work with finer
tonal values, gradations, finer typography,
and a larger variety of colors.
Shadow, dimensionality, and fine lines
could now be printed successfully.
One of the leading designers in poster art
was A.M. Cassandre, a Ukrainian immigrant living in Paris.
He didn't have one set approach based on
De Stijl, Constructivism, or any movement.
Instead, he liberally borrowed elements from each of these.
Each of these movements promised a utopian society.
Cassandre's only connection to this
philosophy was implied wealth.
Cassandre's posters promoted luxury cruises, travel,
expensive products, and an upperclass lifestyle.
Other designers used gaudy and baroque forms to illustrate
these subjects, as if wealth were about gold and ornament.
Cassandre used the minimal geometry
and iconic imagery of the Bauhaus and Constructivism.
His poster for the Normandie is genius.
It is abstract, not realistic.
It is a series of subtle tones
and gradations in a few simple shapes.
The scale is exaggerated.
The elements work together harmoniously
with no unnecessary forms.
Cassandre's forms may appear soft and fluid, but have
an underlying grid based on geometry and repeating forms.
The posters are image-based, telling
the story without the use of verbiage.
The typography, also echoing the other forms.
In this case, a circle served as a secondary element.
Other designers in Paris adopted some of the same concepts.
These posters succeed with a rigid
structure of proportions and shapes,
combined with scale and a sense of grandeur.
Big is huge, small is tiny.
Negative space defines objects, and the same shape
is repeated many times on each composition.
These designers lived in a world
with moving buses and automobiles.
They designed these posters for maximum impact
when seen briefly from a moving car, bus, or train.
The colors and tones have high contrast,
and the details of the image are deleted.
The typography typically is only the name of the product,
letting the image do all the work.
This culture of exquisite poster design is part
of our concept of a romantic Paris of the 1930s.
They are the basis for advertising today.
Create a sense of excitement and adventure
and invite the consumer to be part of this refined world.
This approach of a hard-hitting, fast read
is at the heart of every street poster,
billboard, or magazine ad you see today.