Collection: Advertising & Brands

Before television took the brief, persuasion was a poster on a street corner. Posters made when a brand wanted to be seen. The illustrated advertising poster ran from roughly the 1880s through the 1960s, the period when commercial art was made by artists, not agencies. The work that survived is genuinely good design, because it had to be, because it competed for attention on a street corner with everything else.

The collection spans the great commercial-art schools. Jules Chéret, who effectively invented the modern poster in 1860s Paris and made it respectable. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, who turned the form into fine art. Leonetto Cappiello, the Italian who designed the Bouillon Kub, Campari, and a thousand other brands that still look modern. The Belle Époque, the Art Deco era, the mid-century American golden age. Cassandre's Dubonnet campaign. Bibendum, the original Michelin man, drawn by O'Galop in 1898 and still in use today. Guinness's John Gilroy zoo characters. The Cadbury, Bovril, and Coca-Cola posters that built household-name advertising.

These weren't designed as art. They were designed to sell soap, aperitifs, tyres, tobacco, and chocolate. The fact that the best of them now hang in museums says something about what good commercial design is worth.

Available in seven sizes, A4 through A0.

- Try it on your wall before you buy. Every poster supports our See It On Your Wall preview tool.
- Printed locally for the UK, US, and Canada.
- 200gsm archival paper, pigment-based inks.