Pictorial & machine age · 1948–1979 · Western Europe

French Post-War Visual-Gag Poster (Savignac, Villemot, Morvan)

Also known as Gag graphique, Gag visuel, Visual-gag poster, Savignac school

The humorous street poster of post-war Paris, which took off in 1949 when Raymond Savignac and Bernard Villemot showed their rejected projects together and Savignac's Monsavon cow, its udder filling a bar of soap, went up on the walls. With Hervé Morvan they reduced each advertisement to one cartoon gag whose punchline is the product: a stylised figure brushed in a few bright colours on a plain ground, the brand name drawn into the picture and almost no other copy, printed as large colour lithographs until agency photography pushed it aside in the 1970s.

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A stylised woman with short black hair sits with her knees raised, wearing a blue swimsuit and holding a yellow drink with a red-and-white striped straw. Above her, large hand-painted letters read “SOLEILADE,” with the yellow O surrounded by sun rays on a cream background. — AI-generated by Stylogeny from the style’s design choices. Not a real or historical work.

Use it with care

Savignac, Villemot, Morvan and Carlu are in copyright (Adagp, Paris), and some of their images are still brand property: Savignac's Bic boy is part of the BIC logo, and Orangina reissued Villemot's zest parasol on its bottles in 2011. Invent your own gag for your own product rather than redrawing the Monsavon cow, the Maggi ox or the Bic boy, do not prompt an image model for a named affichiste's hand, and never present a generated image as a vintage affiche.

How it works

Build the poster on one visual gag whose punchline is the product, one image for one idea: the cow's udder fills the soap, the ox sniffs the pot that holds its own hindquarters, a spiral of orange peel becomes a café parasol.
Draw it as a cartoon, with a brushed contour and simplified, exaggerated figures (a nose too big, a body cut off like a joint of meat), and drop realistic detail for the feigned naivety of a child's drawing; or, with Villemot, treat the poster like a painting, as his teacher Paul Colin told him ('Il faut traiter une affiche comme un tableau'), in a pared-down drawing and mostly warm colours that read at once, still keeping to the single idea.
Lay a few bright colours, most often red, yellow and blue with black, in broad flat or loosely brushed fields on a plain ground of white paper, flat yellow or deep blue, and leave that ground empty around the figure; an airbrushed glow or a few white highlights may light the figure and the product (the dark halo round the Monsavon cow and the glow on its soap, the lit bottles of Morvan's Evian).
Letter the brand name by hand inside the picture, on the product itself where possible, or make the product spell it (EVIAN with a bottle in every letter), and cut the copy to the name and at most a short spoken slogan.
Sign the drawing by hand and print it as a large colour lithograph for the hoardings, so the joke reads at a glance from the pavement and stays good-natured: entertainment for a public bored with its daily routine rather than a sales argument.

Paris: Raymond Savignac (1907-2002), who had worked under Cassandre and Charles Loupot at the Alliance graphique from 1935, and Bernard Villemot (1911-1989), a pupil of Paul Colin who named Colin, Leonetto Cappiello and Cassandre as his masters, showed their rejected projects together in Paris in 1949, the year of Savignac's Monsavon cow, a show Universalis calls the irruption of humour into French advertising; Hervé Morvan (1917-1980) had left the realist style of his film posters for commercial advertising in 1948 and joined the vein of the 'gag graphique' with his four Perrier posters of 1950, and older masters such as Jean Carlu took the gag up in the 1950s

Its design choices

From Stylogeny’s vocabulary of design choices: defining choices make the style, characteristic ones are usual, occasional ones turn up now and then.

Layout & composition: Isolated object defining
Full bleed characteristic
Space & hierarchy: Single focal point defining
Generous white space characteristic
Typography: Hand-lettering defining
All caps characteristic
Type as image occasional
Script occasional
Grotesque & neo-grotesque occasional
Colour: Flat fields defining
Primary triad characteristic
Limited spot colours characteristic
Light ground characteristic
Dark ground occasional
Gradients occasional
Form & shape: Stylised figuration defining
Distortion & exaggeration characteristic
Surface & texture: Flat characteristic
Painterly brushwork characteristic
Ornament: Ornament-free defining
Imagery: Comic & cartoon characteristic
Line illustration characteristic
Painterly illustration characteristic
Medium & production: Lithography defining
Architecture & signage characteristic
Offset printing occasional
Pen, brush & ink occasional
Tone & intent: Playful & witty defining
Warm & approachable characteristic
Avoids: Straight photography, Photomontage, Naturalistic depiction, Collage & layering, Modular grid, Horror vacui, Layered information, Abundant decoration

Palette

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Typefaces

Brand name painted by the artist into the picture, often in bold sans capitals on the product itself
POT-AU-FEU MAGGI on the pot, Savignac, 1959
Roman capitals over a lowercase italic line, lettered on the product
MONSAVON / au lait on the soap bar, Savignac, 1949
Joined schoolroom handwriting for a spoken slogan
'elle court elle court' on the 1952 Bic blotter, an agency adaptation after Savignac
The product built into the letters
a bottle in every letter of EVIAN, Morvan, 1962
The artist's handwritten signature in a corner of the image
savignac; Villemot; HERVE MORVAN

Known for

Raymond Savignac, Monsavon au lait (1949)
a pink cow on a deep blue ground, ringed by an airbrushed dark halo, whose udder pours milk into a glowing yellow bar of soap lettered MONSAVON / au lait; colour lithograph, 149 × 100 cm, printed by Bedos & Cie, Paris (Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, inv. 17072, catalogued under 'gag visuel')
Raymond Savignac, Pot-au-feu Maggi (1959)
a red ox, its hindquarters cut off like a joint, sniffs a steaming pot holding the missing piece, on flat yellow; colour lithograph, 113 × 153.5 cm, Bedos & Cie (Musée des Arts Décoratifs, inv. 13568)
'Elle court elle court. La Pointe Bic' (1952)
a red-and-blue blotter for Bic credited 'd'après Savignac', an adaptation created by the Agence Française de Propagande, a big-nosed boy running after a flying ballpoint under the slogan in joined handwriting (Musée des Arts Décoratifs, inv. 2025.124.182)
Raymond Savignac, the Bic schoolboy (1960), a boy with a ball for a head holding a pen behind his back, set to the left of the BIC name in the company logo in 1961 and part of it since
Raymond Savignac, the Cinzano zebra (1951), the Air France giraffe (1956) and Aspro (1963), a migraine drawn as a traffic jam in the head, Martini gold medal 1964
Raymond Savignac, 'You Get Surprise out of LIFE' (1954)
one of 12 posters Young & Rubicam commissioned for LIFE magazine, a monkey covering a bald businessman's eyes (Poster House, New York, PH.296)
Hervé Morvan, Scandale girdles with a sandwich-board man (1948), Kwatta chocolate with a child's chocolate-covered fingers (1950), and four Perrier posters (1950) that permute their elements into incongruous assemblages 'à la manière des jeux d'enfants'
Hervé Morvan, Gitanes (1960)
a flamenco dancer whose shirt, radiant white, is drawn by the cigarettes themselves; Martini medal 1961

Make something in this style

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