Postern

“ Connected with the increased attention given to news is the greater vogue of the newspaper “poster” or contents-bill, which is exhibited in the streets. The poster has acquired commercial importance for indicating the possession of some special news without revealing its whole nature, and the tendency has been to have fewer lines and fewer words in larger type, in order to catch the eye more impressively. ”

“ Well, I am afraid the modern triumph, such as it is, is pictured for us in the rampant poster, which pursues us in and out of stations, up and down streets, and even along the railway lines, which last vantage ground hitherto has been the prerogative of our American cousins. I do not say the poster has no place in art, and many very able artists have designed posters, and, on the whole, our free popular exhibitions on the hoardings have gained both in interest and printing skill, and decorative effect of late years. ”

“ It is simply muddle-headed to apply it to any appeal for volunteers anywhere, in Ireland or England. The whole object of a recruiting poster, or any poster, is to be attractive; it is picked out in words or colours to be picturesquely and pointedly attractive. If it lowers you to make an attractive offer, do not make it ”

“ Roll, the more complete artist, versatile and subtle in his work, master of many styles, proved that he, too, could design an appealing poster, as the fifth plate in this book testifies.
The poster artists of France were not to the same degree overshadowed by one great executant as were those of England by Brangwyn. But for all that, a [Pg 20] figure stands out before the rest, both by his power as a craftsman and the weight and strength of his individual characteristics. ”

“ Posterity has not been vouchsafed a picture of the yelling, chaffing horde of schoolboys; but posterity can see the same light-hearted crowd to-morrow, only in collars not invented in those days, and straw hats in place of the little black caps with the red creased badges. ”

“ Looking at the French war posters as a whole, one feels that in no other country has there been the same poignant appeal, the same presence of a deeply-felt emotion. And these have been transferred to the posters with a spontaneity, a lightness, and an expressive sufficiency that make the French poster stand alone. Take the posters of Steinlen, Faivre, Willette, Poulbot, and that versatile master, Roll, whose death occurred while these notes were being prepared. They each have the brilliant quality of a sketch by a man who is master of his material. ”

“ While we have had individual poster artists, such as Nicholson, Pryde, and Beardsley, whose work has touched perhaps a higher level than has ever been reached on the Continent, our general conception of what is good and valuable in a poster has been almost entirely wrong. The advertising agent and the business firm rarely get away from the popular idea that a poster must be a picture, and that the purpose of every picture is to “point a moral and adorn a tale.” ”

“ I have already remarked that the poster movement in this country amounts to a positive revolution. No young artist is satisfied unless he has a hand in the decoration of the hoardings; the gold frame is for the time forgotten, and all have their eyes on the lithographers stone. France has undoubtedly had a long start of us, but if she is to retain her supremacy she must look to her laurels. Our young men are beating at her doors, though beating only in a spirit of friendly rivalry. Happily, between England and France there is, at this moment, only one war—the war of the pictorial poster. ”

“ All this art may be said to be what the quite new art of the poster certainly is, art meant for the street, for people who are walking fast. It comes into competition with the newspapers, with the music-halls; half contemptuously, it popularises itself; and, with real qualities and a real measure of good intention, finds itself forced to seek for sharp, sudden, arresting means of expression. ”

“ The proper use of colors will make your posters stand out like a sore thumb on a one-armed man.
Colors catch the eye. A small child is attracted to a colored Easter egg where it wouldn’t waste any time on an ordinary piece of hen fruit. We are all susceptible to the beauty and attraction of colors, and nowhere in advertising does color cut quite so much of a figure as in posting.
Strong contrasts and striking effects, rather than daintiness and real artistic combinations, are to be sought for poster work. A poster can either be made or marred by the proper or improper use of colors. ”

“ Perhaps this should discourage me from attempting to collect my rambling recollections under a title which is stolen from Petrarch; but I am encouraged by thinking that Petrarch will not care for this transparent appropriation of his forgotten title, and I am sure that I shall not care if Posterity never receives my letter. I shall not be here to watch for an answer.
And yet I shall be glad if a record of the changeful times in which I have lived gives pleasure to any one who reads my book now, or to those who come after me. It has been a remarkable era. ”

“ Then our postmen will be spared the bulk of their work, which makes it a perpetual Valentine's-day for them.
It is too visionary to hope that our eyes may cease to be distressed by posters blazing everywhere, or that nearly half of every book or newspaper we buy may not be made up of advertisements. ”

“ They seldom realise that poster [Pg 8] art and pictorial art have essentially different aims. If a British firm wishes to advertise beer, it insists on an artist producing a picture of a publican’s brawny and veined arm holding out a pot of beer during closed hours to a policeman; or a Gargantuan bottle towering above the houses and dense crowds of a market-place; or a fox-terrier climbing on to a table and wondering what it is “master likes so much”—all in posters produced at great expense with an enormous range of colour. ”

“ The repetition of the poster design in the store window at the place where the article can be purchased will be strongly supplemental, will tend to freshen the mind of the consumer as having seen the poster and create a desire to buy and try at just the right moment. ”

“ The fact that men so highly endowed as Chéret and Lautrec deliberately choose to appeal to the public chiefly by means of the affiche, well knowing that their gallery is the common hoarding, places the illustrated poster outside the bounds of ridicule. A modern art critic of high repute and of enormous energy has assured us that, in these days, to neglect the poster is mere folly on the part of those who care for the application of taste and skill to the objects of everyday life. ”

“ To familiarize the public with your package means instant recognition when they see it on the dealer’s shelf, counter or floor space.
If possible, have your poster made by a poster artist, and not by a designer of newspaper or magazine advertisements. The proper handling and harmony of colors, [15] as well as that broad poster-carrying effect can only be fully realized by the artist who has specialized in that field.
The poster should be judged from a distance, and should be made for carrying effect rather than close view. People do not stand close to a poster ”

“ Do not send a blurred, blotted, slovenly note to any one; it will remain to call up a certain prejudice against you in the mind of the recipient. The fashion is not now, as it once was, imperative that a margin be left around the edge of the paper. People now write all over the paper, and thus abolish a certain elegance which the old letters undoubtedly possessed. But postage is a consideration, and all we can ask of the youthful letter-writers is that they will not cross their letters. Plaid letters are the horror of all people who have not the eyes of a hawk. ”

“ Posterity, which is now eager for details, infinitely prefers a sketch like this, warm and breathing with the vitality of the beings in whose presence and from whose persons it is drawn, to the cold mosaics, made up by skilful artizans, from the disjointed chips which they are forced to discover, harmonize, and polish, amid the discordant materials left by a hundred writers. Such labors, when undertaken by patient men, may sometimes reanimate the past and bring back its scenes, systems and people, with wonderful freshness ”

“ But shall an author be so shabby as to abridge his sentiments, for the sake of postage, merely because a post-office clerk weighs them more according to his own than the postal rates? And am I not encouraged to the opposite course—that of protracting my emotions—by the electoral, princely, and city-benches in Ratisbon, inasmuch as the said benches by an imperial recess allow me a deduction of two thirds of my postage for printed matter, in order, as they hope, to give encouragement to literature and to sentiment? ”

“ In her mind's eye she saw, with such clearness that her actual eye could scarcely add aught to the confirmation, the thin foreign envelope, the green stamps, the familiar superscription. She went cold and she went hot. Her ears burned, and there were strange noises opening inside them like whistles and hummings, as though in protest to the insupportable outer silence, the imperturbable calm of the Post Office. But the postman was watching her, and the postmaster from his high deal stool. ”

“ As an example of the comparative pulling powers of illustrations I have understood that the news-stand sales of the Saturday Evening Post are appreciably larger when they have on their front cover the picture of an attractive woman than when the design is more general and of less heart interest. If you have a trade-mark for your product that trade-mark should always appear in your poster. ”

“ And so it happens that he is willing, nay eager, to turn his attention to the poster, with the result that the hoarding becomes an interesting, even a charming, gallery of designs. What was one of the most hideous of human inventions is transformed into a delight to the eyes. Colour and interest are added to the street; the gay and joyous take the place of the dull and ugly. ”

“ Grieffenhagen, as a designer of posters, can only be judged by a single production. It may be said at once that nothing more distinguished, nothing which is less imitative or derivative, has come from English hands than Mr. Grieffenhagen's advertisement for the "Pall Mall Budget." Admirable alike in colour and in pattern, the poster is entirely appropriate to its purpose of keeping before the eyes of the public a publication which escaped frivolity on the one hand and dulness on the other. ”

“ Prominent among the French designers of posters with whom I have not previously dealt is Guillaume, an artist widely known in England by reason of the admirable illustrations which, from time to time, appear in our periodicals. Save Chéret and Choubrac, few artists have done so much poster work as Guillaume, and not many have maintained so high a level of accomplishment. Vigour, vivacity, and high spirits, rather than beautiful design and fine colour, are the characteristic qualities of posters by Guillaume. ”

“ Freshly papered boards are a good advertisement for your medium.
Don’t spoil a good effective poster by smearing paste all over the face of it. Put your paste on the back of the poster, and place it with a brush wet only in water, or, if you must use paste on the face of the paper, do so sparingly.
Don’t get into any wrangles with the local Civic Improvement Society, and have them writing all your advertisers to discontinue the use of your medium. You can find plenty of good locations without spoiling the landscape. ”

“ But how much more important is the judgment of posterity? that posterity for whom you are to exert your talents; who, neither dazzled by the false glare of partial commendation, nor deceived by the cloud of contemporary censure, will see, with a distinguishing eye, the real value of each man's abilities; of that posterity, who, in the annals of the academy, will perceive the same names, which the records of the kingdom have consigned to the page of history ”

“ Even about the best of our war posters one feels that they are too often enlarged drawings, excellent as lithographs to preserve in a collector’s portfolio, but ineffective when valued in relation to [Pg 9] the essential services that a poster is required to render. We must regretfully admit that when it comes to choosing illustrations for a volume such as this on their merits as posters, not as pictures, it is difficult not to give a totally disproportionate space to posters made in Germany. ”

“ Postmark, London, S. W. Date, July 7. Hum! Man’s thumb-mark on corner,—probably postman. Best quality paper. Envelopes at sixpence a packet. Particular man in his stationery. No address. ‘Be at the third pillar from the left outside the Lyceum Theatre to-night at seven o'clock. If you are distrustful, bring two friends. You are a wronged woman, and shall have justice. Do not bring police. If you do, all will be in vain. Your unknown friend.' Well, really, this is a very pretty little mystery. What do you intend to do, Miss Morstan? ”

“ On a series of posters a whole story can be told, because one argument can be driven home on each poster. The “reason why” feature of advertising can be applied to posting by the use of this method, and in the development of posting in the coming years the tendency to limit the copy for a poster to merely the name and trade-mark will be over-ruled. ”