Posters  Manufacturers, Traders, Suppliers

A poster is a large sheet of paper, usually printed with text and images, which is placed on a billboard, rider, advertising pillar or other suitable surface in public places to convey a message. By its very nature, the poster is a message to an anonymous group of recipients. The sender cannot directly control whether his message reaches the individual recipient and how he reacts to it.
The word poster appeared in the 16th century in the Netherlands. During the liberation struggle against the Spanish occupying forces, the Dutch had stuck leaflets with glue to the walls and walls of houses. Such sheets of paper were called plakatten (New Dutch plakkaat). In French this resulted in plaque "plate, platelet and placard "stop". In Germany in 1578 the satirist Johann Fischart used the word poster for the first time in the meaning of a public announcement of the authorities.
Precursors of the poster can be found in pre-Christian times. In ancient Rome, legal texts or official notices were placed on white wooden panels (albae) in public places. One could also consider the thesis paper on the sale of indulgences, which Martin Luther attached to the Castle Church in Wittenberg in 1517, a call for public debate. In the 16th and 17th centuries, early forms of the picture poster developed - for isolated offers of goods or the appearances of jugglers' troupes, advertising was carried out with billboards in which texts were combined with pictures. In the 18th century, illustrated posters were used to recruit soldiers, and since about 1830, book illustrators in France have also designed posters for the book trade.
The modern picture poster in the
mid-1930s, the word from the American ("poster") arrived in the German-speaking world. In its issue of February 9, 1935, the Kölnische Illustrierte Zeitung titled an article "PLAKAT - a new photographic catchword from America". It became the most important advertising medium until the mass distribution of television around 1970, since when the poster has hardly changed at all. Then as now, it was printed in large numbers on paper, was large, colourful, eye-catching, contained pictures and writing in the most sensible arrangement possible and wanted to communicate something. In fact, however, apart from the style of the depictions, much has changed in the meantime, without this being apparent at first glance:

• The design technique. After more than a hundred years of at best gradual progress in the manual production of designs - for example through the use of photography and photomontage, airbrush technique or phototypesetting - a revolution in this field began with the use of powerful computers. Today, graphic design is created almost without exception on the computer.
• The printing technology. For decades colour lithography remained the standard in poster printing, but after the Second World War it was replaced by screen printing and photo offset printing.
• The fields of application. In the beginning, posters almost exclusively advertised dance venues and individual consumer goods, later the whole world of goods and services was offered (with the special categories of film, sport, travel, etc.); in addition, there was the wide field of political influence.
• The coordination with other advertising media. After 1900, the realization gradually gained ground that a single advertising medium could not guarantee optimal sales success. The aim was to create a uniform image of the provider, to which the poster, as one of several building blocks, was to contribute. Peter Behrens, artistic advisor to AEG in Germany since 1907, was a pioneer in this field.
• The importance in relation to other media. Compared to its initial superior position, the poster has steadily lost its importance as an advertising medium. The decisive reasons for this were the further development of the press as an advertising medium and new media such as radio, television and the Internet.
• The evaluation of the poster as an object of art or utility. Especially between 1890 and 1910, but also occasionally even after that, there was extensive and controversial discussion about it (see below: The Art Discussion).

The function of the poster is to convey information quickly, often linked to a propagandistic intention. The poster's target group includes not only those who are looking for this information, but also those who perceive the poster and its message as they walk by. Since hardly any major social event can do without the poster (e.g. elections, including sham elections, exhibitions, films, theatre productions, commemoration days, sports festivals, appeals, advertising for consumer goods), the poster has a great everyday significance. It is therefore a mirror of social conditions and an important source for understanding a time.
Source Wikipedia: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plakat