Advertising Posters

Dictionary entry

1. Plakatstil / Sachplakat 1900s–1910s / Style

   Cuts advertising down to the product and its name, delivering meaning at a glance from across the street.

2. Circus Poster 1870s–1930s / Style

   The show-bill style that threw chromolithography and wood type at maximum claims and overloaded scenes — including the practice of papering entire walls — advertising that turned the city into a theater.

3. Beggarstaff Style 1894–1899 / Style

   Nicholson and Pryde's cut-paper poster style: contours dropped, subjects summarized in flat shapes of few colors. Commercially unsuccessful in its day, its radical economy anticipated the 20th-century poster.

4. Golden Age Travel Poster 1890s–1930s / Style

   The lithographed tourism posters railways and shipping lines competed with: idealized destination landscapes, ornamental lettering and proud route names inventing travel itself as an image of desire.

5. Shōwa Modern 1920s–1930s / Style

   Prewar Japan's commercial modernism, typified by Sugiura Hisui's Mitsukoshi and subway posters: Deco crossed with nihonga, the modern girl's city and refined lettering drawing the dawn of consumer culture.

6. Yuefenpai 1910s–1940s / Style

   Shanghai's calendar-advertising paintings: qipao beauties in soft carbon-and-watercolor rendering, serving cigarettes, cosmetics and the calendar at once — the East-West commercial figure that repainted East Asia's visual culture.

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