Posters were built for attention. Long before anybody thought about putting them in conservation frames, they were pasted to walls, hung in stations, displayed outside cinemas and used to compete for a few seconds of somebody’s attention.
That practical purpose is what makes their history so interesting. Changes in printing, transport, entertainment, fashion and popular culture all show up on paper.
The Printed Originals collection spans more than a century, so this is not intended as an exhaustive academic history. It is a collector’s route through some of the periods and movements that explain why original posters look the way they do.
The Nineteenth Century: Colour Lithography Changes Everything
Lithography made it possible to reproduce drawn imagery at scale, and advances in colour printing helped turn city streets into visual galleries. By the late nineteenth century, Paris in particular had become synonymous with the illustrated advertising poster.
Jules Chéret was one of the defining figures of this period. His bright, energetic posters for theatres, performers, products and entertainments helped demonstrate that commercial advertising could have its own artistic language.
1900s–1930s: Travel, Industry and Art Deco
Railways, ocean liners, airlines and tourism organisations understood the power of posters early. They did not simply advertise a ticket; they sold an idea of modern life.
By the 1920s and 1930s, Art Deco introduced geometry, speed and machine-age confidence. Designers such as A.M. Cassandre could turn a locomotive or ship into an almost architectural image.
The Golden Age of Travel Posters
Travel posters deserve their own place in design history because they asked artists to sell somewhere the viewer was not currently standing. British railway companies, European tourism boards, airlines and resorts commissioned extraordinary work throughout the twentieth century.
The best examples are idealised without being generic. A few colours, a coastline, a station, a mountain or a piece of architecture could make a destination feel instantly desirable.
Cinema Creates a New Visual Language
As film became mass entertainment, the movie poster became one of the most visible forms of commercial art. Different countries developed their own formats and often their own artwork.
Early cinema posters could be heavily illustrated and text-rich. Later decades produced everything from painted star portraits to photography, collage and radical graphic minimalism.
The international differences are one of the joys of collecting. The same film can look restrained on a British Quad, explosive on an Italian poster and completely different again on a French Grande.
Post-War and Mid-Century Modern Design
The post-war decades produced some of our favourite poster design. Simplified forms, confident typography, photography and flat areas of colour created work that now reads instantly as Mid-Century Modern.
Commercial designers were solving practical problems — make somebody look, understand and remember — but the solutions often feel remarkably contemporary. That is why a good 1950s or 1960s advertising poster can sit in a modern interior without feeling like a museum piece.
The 1960s: Graphics, Counterculture and Music
Music and counterculture opened another chapter. Psychedelic concert posters deliberately challenged easy readability, using intense colour, distorted lettering and imagery connected to a particular scene and moment.
At the same time, corporate, fashion and cultural poster design continued to absorb modernist ideas. There was never one single 1960s style; that variety is exactly what makes the decade so collectible.
The 1970s and 1980s: The Illustrated Blockbuster
For many film collectors, this is the era that feels immediately personal. Illustrated One-Sheets by artists such as Bob Peak, Tom Jung and Drew Struzan helped define how major films were presented before audiences saw a frame.
We have a particular love for these posters. Part of it is nostalgia, but the best examples deserve more credit than that. They combine likeness, composition, typography and storytelling with extraordinary technical skill.
By the 1980s, the standard US One-Sheet itself was changing, with later theatrical posters increasingly distributed rolled and the familiar dimensions shifting from the older 27 x 41-inch convention toward approximately 27 x 40 inches.
Photography, Digital Production and the Modern Poster
Photography had been part of poster design for decades, but later twentieth-century production increasingly moved toward photographic composites and digital workflows. Printing and distribution changed too.
That does not mean the story of the original poster ended. A genuine theatrical, exhibition, music or advertising poster produced for its actual campaign remains an original object of that campaign. What changes is the technology and context used to make it.
Why Poster History Matters to Collectors
Understanding the history helps with more than appreciation. It explains why certain printing methods are expected, why standard sizes change, why folds appear, why national artwork differs and why a poster should be judged according to its own period rather than a universal checklist.
Most importantly, it makes collecting more fun. Once you begin recognising the design language of a decade or the hand of an artist, a poster stops being an isolated image and becomes part of a much larger story.
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Explore original posters spanning more than a century of design history.