Stylogenyin the style of Plakatstil / Sachplakat

Pictorial & machine age · 1905–1920 · Central Europe

Plakatstil / Sachplakat

Also known as Sachplakat, Object poster, German poster style

The German 'object poster' launched by Lucian Bernhard's Priester match poster and printed by Berlin's Hollerbaum & Schmidt. It strips the advertisement to a single product rendered in flat, saturated colour and the brand name in bold hand-drawn letters on a plain ground, so the message registers instantly from a passing tram or across the street.

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A tall, slender red-orange dog stands facing right against a black background, with angular black cutouts defining its features and limbs. Large cream capital letters spell “VELOX” beneath its paws.
AI-generated by Stylogeny from the style’s design choices. Not a real or historical work.

01

How it works

  • Show only the product, or one emblematic figure, isolated against a flat, plain ground.
  • Reduce the text to the brand name, hand-lettered large and heavy.
  • Use two to four flat, saturated colours with no modelling, gradients or background detail.
  • Simplify the object to its characteristic silhouette with crisp edges.
  • Eliminate decorative borders and scenery so the poster reads in a single glance.

Berlin and Munich, Germany

02

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
Space & hierarchy
Typography
Colour
Form & shape
Surface & texture
Ornament
Imagery
Medium & production
Tone & intent
Avoids
Abundant decoration, Floral & vegetal, Whiplash line, Horror vacui, Eclectic mixing, Collage & layering, Straight photography, Gradients

Palette

  • #efe5cf
  • #151515
  • #d2382b
  • #24418f
  • #e3b23c
  • #2f5d3a

Typefaces

  • Lucian Bernhard's hand-drawn block lettering

  • Block

    Hermann Hoffmann, H. Berthold, 1908

  • Bernhard Antiqua

    Lucian Bernhard, Flinsch, 1912

Known for

  • Lucian Bernhard

    Priester matches, c. 1905–06

  • Hans Rudi Erdt

    Opel, 1911

  • Julius Klinger

  • Julius Gipkens

  • Ludwig Hohlwein

    Munich

  • Hollerbaum & Schmidt, Berlin

    printers

  • Das Plakat

    journal of the Verein der Plakatfreunde, 1910–1921

03

Make something in this style

Say what you need, and Stylogeny’s image studio draws it from Plakatstil / Sachplakat’s design choices and checks it against them. It takes about a minute, and you get a link to share.

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04

Where it comes from, and what it’s close to

Before it

The style it grew out of, and the styles it borrowed from.

This stylePlakatstil / Sachplakat1905–1920 · Central Europe

After it

The styles that grew out of it.

Alike in its design choices

Styles that make many of the same choices, related or not, besides those above.

05

Real works

Artefacts in museums, libraries and archives that show the style, linked at their source.

06

Sources

  1. Philip B. Meggs & Alston W. Purvis, Meggs' History of Graphic Design
  2. Jeremy Aynsley, Graphic Design in Germany 1890–1945 (2000)
  3. Neue Galerie New York, 'German Advertising Posters of the Early 20th Century' (neuegalerie.org)

How Stylogeny researches and checks a style: where the facts come from.