Řeč plakátu 1890–1938

The publication presents the poster as a visual communication medium that uses a specific language connecting image and text. The poster serves to convey information of short-term importance, therefore it is based on immediate, up-to-date language, comprehensible across a wide social spectrum. The semantics of the poster message is also enhanced by the structuring of the information, visual references and schemes aimed at a specific audience (professional, national or gender groups). For different purposes, the poster uses different types of speech, but some of his clichés work universally. The book approximates the language of the poster in the most diverse ways of communication and the roles it fulfilled whether for the benefit of art, commerce or ideology. Individual types of visual messages are represented both by the most important exhibits from the more than 30,000 poster collection of the Museum of Applied Arts in Prague, which is among the oldest and most important European poster collections, as well as by artefacts of ordinary production from the period 1890–1938 with an emphasis on works of Czech and Central European provenance. The articles take into account more general issues - critical reflection of the poster in Bohemia, ways of applying the poster in the urban environment, the change in the language of the poster - as well as narrowly focused topics such as the interwar advertising scene, awareness poster or posters promoting art.