history of posters

Posters, in the form of placards and posted bills, have been used for a long time, primarily for advertising and announcements. Purely textual posters have a long history: they advertised the plays of Shakespeare and made citizens aware of government proclamations for centuries. However, the great revolution in posters was the development of printing techniques that allowed for cheap mass production and printing, including notably the technique lithography which was invented in 1796 by the German Alois Senefelder. The invention of lithography was soon followed by chromolithography, which allowed for mass editions of posters illustrated in vibrant colors to be printed.

Vin Mariani, Jules Cheret's 1894 poster for the digestif and tonic wine fortified by coca

Buenos Aires advertising poster by Lucien-Achille Mauzan (1925).

By the 1890s, the technique had spread throughout Europe. A number of noted artists created poster artin this period, foremost amongst them Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Jules Chéret. Chéret is considered to be the "father" of advertisement placards. He was a pencil artist and a scene decorator, who founded a small lithography office in Paris in 1866. He used striking characters, contrast and bright colors, and created over 1000 advertisements, primarily for exhibitions, theatres, and products.