Printed Originals
Learn About Posters
Everything we know about collecting, sizing, framing, conserving and valuing original vintage posters — from people who handle them every day.
New to Original Posters?
Posters Come in All Shapes and Sizes.
From a small Lobby Card to a huge French Grande, poster formats vary enormously by country, period and purpose.
Explore Poster Sizes & Formats
Meet the Artists
Made Simple
There is plenty of terminology in the poster world, but it should not be intimidating. These guides explain the things we look at every day when sourcing, assessing, framing and handling original posters, in straightforward language and with real examples wherever possible.
Our own tastes range widely. We love the colour and craftsmanship of early French lithography, the confidence of Mid-Century Modern graphic design, great travel and advertising art, and the illustrated US One-Sheets of the 1970s and 1980s that made cinema advertising an art form in its own right. The joy of the subject is that there is always another artist, format, country or story to discover.
27 × 41″
For decades, the American One-Sheet was actually an inch taller than today’s standard 27 × 40″ format — a good reminder that dimensions shift with period, not just country.
The Real Thing
What actually makes a poster original? Paper, printing method, period typography and printer credit lines all matter more than a signature or a familiar image — these are physical, historical objects, not just pictures.
There Is Always More to Learn.
Poster collecting is far too broad for this ever to be a finished encyclopaedia. We’ll keep adding artist profiles, format guides and stories from the posters that pass through our hands.
Have a poster you’re trying to understand? Get in touch
Or just fancy looking at some posters? Explore the collection