A5/08: Best German Posters

In 1949, the competition “Die besten Plakate des Jahres” (The Best Posters of the Year) took place for the first time in the newly founded Federal Republic of Germany. Designers could enter poster designs from the past year, a jury of experts awarded prizes for the best works. From 1966 onwards, there was such an annual competition in the GDR too. Many of the commended works from that time are today amongst the canon of German and international design history.

The book tells the eventful history of the competitions and their changing shape over the decades. The picture section shows over 250 posters from 1949 to 2000 from a total of almost 4,000 award-winning works. An all-German poster history, which visualizes lasting changes as well as transient design trends and shows many of the best German posters, including works by Hellmut Brade, cyan, Michael Engelmann, Frieder Grindler, Erhard Grüttner, Rudolf Grüttner, Hans Hillmann, Günther Kieser, Uwe Loesch, Holder Matthies, Pierre Mendell, Rolf Felix Müller, Volker Pfüller, Ott+Stein, Gunter Rambow and many others.