The Poster King - Exhibition

I recently went to the exhibition at the Estorick Collection of Edward McKnight Kauffer's poster designs. He was best known for his creations for Shell and the Underground. Given he worked as an artist and the term graphic designer wasn't even coined yet, I was really impressed with his attention to detail and strong use of typography. Particularly as his work progressed he worked on integrating type within the imagery. His attention to composition, layout and grid led to him producing some magnificently styled posters and set him apart from other artists of the time.


His posters worked as a great means of advertising and it was appealing to see them with such an artistic focus. It's nice to see beautifully and creative thought out pieces, whereas foreseeably a lot of advertisements focus on the 'bad is good' concept. With the examples of cheesy songs, "choo, choo, choose the train line.com", "we buy any car" or "go compare." The use of annoyingly cheap and tacky themes works as they are memorable but only because of their dire and woefully crass. Or to put it in the words of Trevor Beattie in a recent Evening Standard article, "some of it is bloody awful... People aren't rocking the boat enough." If anything the mentioned adverts should spur creatives on to produce something that deserves to be remembered. Believe it or not it's been 4 years since the infamous Cadburys' Gorilla. The days of beautifully designed and innovative need to be grasped and not fall into the easy route of a quick laugh ad.


Here are a few examples of Kauffer's work.