![]() These weren’t necessarily posters or signs, but the techniques developed and used would become the foundation of the modern printing industry.īy the 1440s, Guttenberg’s printing press made it easier to replicate handbills to promote an idea, event, or product, resulting in some of the small signs that remain advertising Shakespeare’s shows from the late 1500s. In the East, rudimentary woodblock printing existed as early a 3000 BC, where swaths of silk would feature decorative images or chunks of theatrical text. Even in the ruins of Pompeii, there appear to be signs advertising bordellos-a physical object proving that as long as there has been something to sell or trade, man has found a way to promote it. There is evidence of signage and poster-like artifacts dating back to Ancient Egypt when a business owner would chisel his profession on the side of his shop or in Ancient Rome when bathhouses and taverns were marked by terracotta slabs featuring text and symbols to indicate what activities took place inside. Just like language, there is no definitive origin story of when or where the first poster appeared. As the height of the poster craze happened in an era before photography, we have very little record of many of the designs created-in fact, the only posters that do survive are parts of the printing run that were never displayed in the first place. Unlike the Mona Lisa that has survived hundreds of years, a poster would sometimes only be seen for a few days or even hours before it would disappear, most likely forever. Unlike a painting you see in a museum, a poster isn’t unique-hundreds or thousands of copies of a given image would have been printed and disseminated around a city or country, allowing for tens of thousands of viewers to come in contact with it before it would be destroyed through weather, vandalism, or simply by being covered by the next ad. In its most basic form, though, a poster is a temporary promotion of an idea, product, or event put up in a public space for mass consumption.Ī poster is not high art. It can be a celebrity pinup you tear out of a magazine, an ad you see on the subway, a reproduction of a famous artwork you hang in your dorm room, a promotion for a concert on the side of a building, a notice from the Department of Health showing you how to perform the Heimlich Maneuver in a restaurant, a plea to vote or not vote for a particular candidate-the list is endless. ![]() In today’s world, a poster is many things. ![]()
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