German Object Posters were originated in the early 1900s around Germany and were called ‘Sachplakat’ or ‘Plakastil’. The posters followed the theme of having large, flat colours making them easy to produce, and by having bold typography they were easier to read by passers-by. German object posters were one of the main reasons that colour advertising started to boom and why we have it in our advertisements today.

A German War Poster from 1900 promoting a matching business.

A modern-day poster promoting staying safe from Covid-19 using the style of the German Propaganda Posters

 

Task- Create your own German Object Poster and develop it with features such as typography, colour and extra detail

After taking inspiration from the German propaganda posters from WW2 I made my own poster promoting Pepsi with a witty slogan. I made this within illustrator using the pen tool to make my logo, I traced over the original making my design process easier and making my stroke bold to grab attention. For the background of my poster I used red and blue as these are the main colours of the Pepsi brand, I blended these colours into each other using the gradient tool and used bold white typography for easy reading when passing by.

 

What I like about my recreation is the detail and accuracy I used with the pen tool, I would continuously go back to the direct selection tool to make angles of my line the most accurate they could be. However something I would also improve on this piece of work is making sure all my lines attach to each other, I couldn’t figure out how to resolve this in such early stages of using illustrator but in future, I would want to improve on this.

German Propaganda Posters in my opinion are very effective for grabbing attention and getting a message across without using words but instead with colour and imagery, they can be applied to modern problems from today to also convey a message which proves how well this style works.