Playground: 18th- and 19th-century posters

I’m still very drawn to this sort of more typographic poster. Despite the limitations in terms of colour (sometimes just one, sometimes two or three) and visual elements, and despite the fact that they completely disregard a number of rules from design theory (‘never use more than two, at most three, different typefaces’). That theory didn’t even exist back then, after all; it was the early days of the ‘graphic design’ discipline. This was pioneering in the truest sense of the word.

What does that say about the visual culture in which we (I) live? That we sometimes long for simplicity, for limitations? It could well be. Anyway, these were poster designs that may not always have been very clear in terms of visual hierarchy, but (not just for me) remain a source of inspiration!