Search results for ""Author Bettina Richter""

The medium of the poster is distinguished by displaying messages combining images and text on a static, two-dimensional surface. Designers have, however, always toyed with extending the plane by adding a third dimension, whether spatial or temporal, in order to fool the eye. Stop Motion examines the myriad creative approaches to suggesting movement, recession into depth, dynamics, and rhythm. Perspectival narrowing and plastically rendered motifs are among the traditional stylistic means used in painterly and illustrative posters. Borrowings from Op Art or psychedelic art perplex the eye. In photographic posters, techniques such as blurring or time exposure are used to cause an image to vibrate. But sophisticated printing techniques can also broaden the possibilities of visual expression. In contemporary posters, it is the strictly graphic means of writing, abstract pictograms, or geometric forms that stretch out nested spaces, through which the gaze wanders restlessly. Stop Motion reveals that poster designers have in fact traditionally sought to incorporate the aspect of movement. Moreover, the works assembled in the publication show that—with the exception of the current animated poster trend—the simulation of movement and three dimensions is always the result of a conscious design decision motivated by the respective content.

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The Swiss population is called upon to participate actively in political decision-making processes through regular campaigns. These campaigns are often concerned with issues that heat up the emotions and lead to ideological battles. Swiss campaign posters, which have influenced opinion making since the beginning of the 20th century, bear testimony to direct democracy. This special form of political propaganda—prominently associated with Switzerland—is a sensitive indicator of socio-political moods and reflects both national mentalities and global tendencies. Yes! No! Posters for Democracy reveals the visual argumentation strategies and rhetorical approaches that have shaped the Swiss campaign poster from 1918 to the present. Clichéd exaggerations, undifferentiated simplifications, a repertoire of drastic motifs and abridged slo- gans correspond to the laws of the medium, which is oriented towards a manipulative appeal to the masses. Appeals to a sense of unity focus primarily on emotionalization, hardly on rational enlightenment. Subtly condensed messages or a graphically innovative language are hardly to be found in Swiss campaign posters. And yet many renowned designers created works that have inscribed themselves in the collective visual memory of the Swiss population and became icons of Swiss poster design.

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Iranian graphic design looks back on a brief history. The first poster designers completed independent artistic training and created painterly-illustrative works in the 1960s. The simultaneous opening to the West under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi promoted global cultural exchange. With the proclamation of the Islamic Republic in 1979 and the First Gulf War (1980–1988), however, this was rapidly interrupted. At the end of the 1980s, a new generation of designers took up the graphic heritage of the pre-war period. At the turn of the millennium, the Iranian poster finally conquered international festivals and caused a great stir in the Western community. The volume Contemporary Iran brings together Iranian cultural posters from 1960 to the present. Despite the many different creative approaches, they always demonstrate the search for a fusion of history and contemporaneity, Iran’s own tradition and Western inspiration, art and everyday culture. An often unorthodox interpretation of Persian cultural heritage is combined with the confident use of computer-generated graphics. Thus, some posters confirm common Western notions of Islamic aesthetics, while others radically undermine them and irritate and surprise us.

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Bodies act as powerful signs: Which bodies are represented and how, which gaze determines them, which bodies are not shown or only shown in a particular way and in a particular context? Normative ideas of the body and beauty shape images of the self and the world. They are bodies that manifest inequalities and reflect the prevailing relations of power and violence. Talking Bodies examines mechanisms of representation of the body in medial cultures and illus- trates them exemplarily with posters. Masterpieces of art history that have inscribed themselves in the collective memory are negotiated, as are contemporary self-dramatizations in social media, gender stereotypes, images of black bodies, and the representation of disabled and non-normative bodies. With its focus on the construction and impact of body images, but also on possible strategies of resistance, the publication sees itself as a critical contribution to current debates. With essays by Markus Dederich, Florian Diener, Hans Fässler, Bettina Richter, Maria Schreiber, Marilyn Umurungi, Paula-Irene Villa

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