Priester Match Poster^397
Lucian BernhardThe Priester Matchposter is so startling
that it grabs the viewer’s eye in an
instant. Of course, the aim of all good
advertising is to make the unmemorable
memorable by mythologizing the
commonplace products of daily life.
However, before the Priester Match
poster first appeared on the Berlin poster
hoardings in 1906 , most advertising was
ornate and wordy. The persuasive
simplicity of the Priester poster was rare
indeed. Moreover, no one had yet heard
the name of its eighteen-year-old creator,
Lucian Bernhard ( 1883 – 1972 ), or the
genre of advertising he invented, which
became known as the Sachplakat,or
object poster.
Bernhard’s early object posters
are ubiquitous in poster anthologies. The
most striking excel in terms of their graphic eloquence, simplicity, and
strength. The method he defined, and the style that ultimately emerged, was
predicated on an unadorned, bold-outlined, centered representation of the
product being advertised, like a typewriter, spark plug, or piano, placed
against a flat color background of forest green, bright purple, or deep orange.
The lettering was reduced to a few words, usually the brand name alone. The
object in the Sachplakat, rendered much like a woodcut, grabbed the attention
of passersby as it aesthetically and unambiguously hawked its message. The
virtue of this invention was that viewers didn’t have to navigate through
tedious selling copy, confusing graphics, or other visual distractions. The
image was clear, concise, and downright pleasing to the tired eye.
Bernhard’s formative years coincided with the explosion of art
nouveau in France and Jugendstil in Germany. Munich was the center of
the “radical” German graphic arts, but he decided to settle in Berlin where
the wonders of industrial production and commercialism were manifest.
Like most turn-of-the-century industrial capitals, Berlin bustled with
vehicular traffic, was bathed in electric lights and signs, and exalted in the