Lucian Bernhard and the Plakatstil Poster

Those Amazing Plakatstil Posters!

Hans Rudi Erdt

When we look at retro posters there can be no more of an amazing story than what happened to a 15 year old in 1898 Berlin Germany. His name was Lucian Bernhard and after attending an exhibition of interior decoration he was amazed by the lavish colors he had experienced throughout the show.

Dumbstruck with enthusiasm for these avant-garde colors, Lucian decided to paint his father’s home interiors in the bright paints he was so moved by. His father, retuning from a three-day trip was shocked at what Lucien had done. Not amused, his father named his son a criminal causing young Lucian to flee his home.

Trying desperately to support himself on his own, this self-taught young artist eventually decided to enter a poster contest for Priester matches in 1905. The original poster design was an ashtray with lighted cigar and a box of matches on a tablecloth. Lucian eventually felt the image was too bare and he painted dancing girls in the background rising out of the smoke. Further examination later that day, he decided that the image was too complicated so he painted the girls out. Even later that evening a friend dropped by and asked if it was a poster for a cigar. That motivated Bernhard to paint out the cigar. The young artist also decided that the tablecloth and ashtray stood out to prominently and painted those out as well.

What was left? Just matches a on bare table. With time running out on the contest deadline Bernard quickly painted the word Priester above the matches in blue and got the poster off to the competition that needed to be postmarked by midnight.

The poster and advertising in general was about to have a ground breaking change. The story gets even more amazing! It was eventually leaked out that all of the entries were first thrown in the trash and completely rejected by all the jurors. If one of the group had not arrived late the history of poster design would have been quite different. Ernst Growald of the Hollerbaum and Schmidt lithography firm convinced the jurors that one of the designs in the trash was worthy of reconsideration. Holding up Bernhard’s poster Growald lectured the group,
“This is my first prize. Here is a genius!”

The design went on to become the famous Priester matches poster which was a formula that would be repeated many times over. A simple, direct reduction of shapes and a word. A design approach that is still used with the advantage of running as tiny as a postage stamp and as large as a billboard. This design school of flat shapes and simple color became known as the Plakatstil (poster style) of Germany in the early twentieth century.

Bernhard used this approach in next two decades of his career. He designed over 300 packages for the firm and influenced five other graphic designers to come on board with them. What followed was an amazing array of product logo posters that eventually made its way to America in 1923. Oddly enough, it was five years before he received any poster commissions. No doubt German poster art would eventually play a significant role in the language of American advertising.