CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 5/19/2015

How Posters Work

In 1956, pioneering Czech designer and information architect Ladislav Sutnar created a new logotype for the Swedish office machine brand Addo-X, along with a series of related posters and advertisements. This poster—boldly designed in 1958 to promote "precision engineered adding machines and calculators"—features Swedish actress and model Kerstin Anita Marianne Ekberg two years prior to her unforgettable role in Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita. Sutnar's "addo-x" is one of 150 exquisite examples selected by Cooper-Hewitt curator of contemporary design Ellen Lupton for the museum's current exhibition on How Posters Work. Lupton writes, "This is not a book about posters. It is a book about how designers see. The works assembled here show how dozens of different designers—from prominent pioneers to little-known makers—have mobilized principles of composition, perception and rhetoric. Each poster enacts ways of thinking and making, and each poster wants to be seen. How do we look at graphic design, and how, in turn, does graphic design look back at us?"