Before Class: Chapter Fourteen

1. Sum up the reading in your own words in 1 paragraph.
Chapter 14 was about poster design \s in the earlier half of the Twentieth Century. Beggarstaffs was formed by two men, James Pryde and William Nicholson, who developed the technique of collage. Beggarstaffs Brothers was a name that was found on a sack of corn, Pryde and Nicholson wanted to protect their reputations as artists so they came up with the pseudonym, Beggarstaffs. They opened an advertising design studio in 1894, their work was a huge success but was a financial disaster. Dudley Hardy was also a man who turned to advertising and poster design, who was instrumental in introducing the graphic pictorial qualities of the French poster to London billboards during the 1890s. He also developed an effective formula for theatrical poster works: lettering and figures appear against simple flat backgrounds. Plakatstil was a German style that emerged in the early Twentieth Century that was based of flat color background, large simple images, and the product name. Lucian Bernhard had moved graphic communications on step further in the simplification and reduction of naturalism into a visual language of shape and sign. Bernhard developed a sans-serif lettering style painted in broad brushstrokes. He also went into interior design, then studied carpentry to learn furniture design and construction. This naturally led to a study of architecture. He later visited America where his designs were not accepted because they were too modern and it took him five years to establish himself as a graphic designer. Julius Klinger, who had been associated with the Vienna Secession artists, moved to Berlin, where his style veered from floral art nouveau toward decorative shapes of bright color and simple lettering. A lot of the poster designs during this era were propaganda posters dedicated to WWI. The posters produced by the Central Powers were quite different from those made by the Allies. In Austria-Hungary and Germany, war posters continued the traditions of the Vienna Secession and the simplicity of the Plakatstil pioneered by Bernhard. The Allies' approach to their propaganda was more illustrative, being very literal, less focus on symbolic imagery. British posters stressed the need to protect traditional values, the home, and the family. James Montgomery Flagg created the "We Want You" poster, based off a self portrait.

2. Name the one thing (or person) you found most interesting from the reading.
One thing that I found interesting was that the "Uncle Sam" poster "We Want You" was a self portrait; that is really cool because almost everyone knows that poster, but how many people would know that it is actually an image of the artist? Another thing that was really interesting was the differences in the styles of the posters, the Allies had their own style and the Central Powers had their own style.

3. State at least one question you have after the reading. (if you state none here, you’d better have more detail done above to offset the work.)
Why did Beggarstaffs go out of business if their designs were so popular? What kind of financial difficulties were they having?