THE POSTER BIBLIOGRAPHY PROJECT

The interest in posters has grown steadily during the past thirty years. They now decorate corporate headquarters, are displayed in art museums and command record prices at international auctions. The published information on posters and their designers has increased correspondingly and is as diverse and widely scattered as the posters themselves. The literature is often difficult or time consuming to locate, but help is on the way:

The POSTER BIBLIOGRAPHY PROJECT is an ongoing effort that started in 1985, in collaboration with an international group of poster experts, to compile the literature on posters and extract from it all references to poster designers. In its present computerized form, the data can be sorted in various ways, for example alphabetically according to designers name, or chronologically for exhibition date. Publication in form of a reference book is planned.

Contents of the Bibliography

• Survey on the published literature on posters in the form of books, journal articles, exhibition catalogues, auction catalogues, sales catalogues, dissertations.
• List of poster designers with year of birth and of death, country of main activity, and references to each publication in which the designer or his posters are mentioned or shown.

Scope

International, covering the time period from 1850 to 2004

Sources of information used for the literature survey

• Libraries of the public poster collections in Basel, Brno, Chaumont, Cracow, Essen, Kiev, Lahti, Locronan, Paris, Poznan, Prague, Treviso, Warsaw, Zurich
• Art libraries in Amsterdam, Antwerp, Barcelona, Berlin, Boston, London, Los Angeles, Moscow, New York, Paris, Philadelphia PA, Providence RI
• National and public libraries in Brussels, Budapest, Milan, New York, Paris, St. Petersburg, Washington
• Personal libraries of many leading poster designers, experts, collectors and dealers

Coverage

Only published material has been processed, while card catalogues of growing collections have been excluded. Among the periodicals that have been scanned for poster references are Affiche, Das Plakat, Gebrauchsgraphik, Graphis, Idea, Neue Werbung, Projekt, Tvar and the yearbooks Graphis Posters, Graphic Design in Japan and Modern Publicity. The catalogues include those of the biennial or triennial exhibitions in Brno, Chaumont, Essen, Fort Collins, Katowice, Lahti, Mexico City, Mons, Moscow, Riga, Tallinn, Toyama, Trnava, Vilnius, Warsaw and Zagreb as well as those of numerous national, thematic or individual exhibitions.

Size of the Bibliography (status in July 1999)

63'000	poster designers from all over the world
310'000	literature references
5'900	poster exhibitions
6'400	articles in periodicals
2'500	poster books
770	auction or sales catalogues

Target interest groups

• Anyone preparing a poster exhibition or doing research on a particular poster designer, or interested in the posters created by graphic designers, painters, sculptors, architects etc.
• Poster collectors, art auctioneers, advertising agencies
• Design schools, art museums, poster art galleries, reference libraries, public archives

A sample of what the POSTER BIBLIOGRAPHY contains for a particular designer can be found in the poster exhibition of Mieczyslaw Wasilewski

If you have questions or want to contribute information, please send mail to .