FERNAND LEGER
The eye, the mistress organ with a thousand responsibilities, rules the indi
vidual more than ever. From morning to evening it registers without stop
ping. Speed rules in the modern world. On the other hand the strain of
commercialism has grown so far that a mannequin parade by a tailor may
compete with. if not surpass, the shows of a dozen small theatres. Ac
cordingly, posters on the street must be better than an exhibition of paint
ings. Which makes it necessary to organize the street like a theatre. The
street is altogether too dynamic, it is rapacious and wearing on the nerves.
Our present life is so anxious and so frightening that we need quieter, bet
ter-ordered streets, where our nerves can be peaceful and not torn apart.
The poster should therefore be thought of not as jazz but as orchestral
music.ROBERT DELAUNAY:
A poster is colour or nothing. Form is nothing but a dimension of colour.
From a physical point of view, therefore, the best poster is that which we
see most often and from farthest away, like a railway signal. How is the best
result obtained? By each one of us, singly and alone, caring about the
rhythm and interrelation of colours. Anything else can be forgotten. We
must therefore stop using colours by chance or intuition, in order to make
something "pretty" or "beautiful." We must be scientific and make them
vibrate in harmony like music. And we must start from the beginning to
make posters not a corruption of the eyes but an invitation or a source of
information. Posters must be treated as such. No more trying to make them
more or less seductive representations of objects, but have the aim of mak
ing them put us under their spell by their vibrating impressions of greater
or lesser intensity.
Poster Formats
Standard sizes for posters are given on p.l74.