Poster Art Methods

Any process yielding a finished product involves a methodology. A mode of thinking and set of instructions are integral to creating things we find both exceptional and otherwise. Poster art itself has a litany of methods that contribute to some of the most astonishing images ever produced on paper. Keeping with the artistic philosophy of creation, the process is important to poster art methods.

The earliest poster art method is stone lithography, dominant from the late 1880's to the mid-1930's.

Stone lithography uses porous stones, so that the ink is fully absorbed yet retains wetness. Each stone is painted a different color of the same image. The images are then chemically etched onto the stones and the ink is absorbed into the protuberant areas. After absorption, the stones are pressed onto the sheets in alternating steps: First pressed, then dried, and then pressed with a different color. This particular poster art method provides outstanding, lavish colors and depth that make posters of late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries rare and precious.

Because stone lithography proved to be tedious and somewhat difficult, screen printing gained momentum after World War II. It was the poster art method that allowed more manipulation of shape and layout. The image is burned onto a transparency and the space inside is cut away. Next, different color cells for each image or section of an image are created–these will fill in the cut out spaces with paint during the screen printing process. The actual screen printing involves multiple sheets overlaying the printing sheet and allows paint to neatly fill in the spaces. Each layer is added to colorize the master image. Screen printing is quite intricate and fastidious. Therefore, a flawless finished product heavily depends on keeping the color cells, the master transparency, and poster sheet aligned. If they are not precisely aligned, the imaging will skew and cause sloppy coloring. In this instance, the process is all about coloring within the lines.

The most modern poster art method to surface owes a great debt to the computer revolution, digital poster printing. Digital poster printing is divided into two processes. The first part of the digital process entails designing the image. There is a wide variety of software produced for PC and Mac systems, such as Adobe Photoshop, Quark, Pagemaker, etc. The software allows users to digitally manipulate already captured images or create new images. With digital imaging software, the artistic boundaries are seemingly limitless. Next, once the image has been finalized, the poster is printed through an industrial size inkjet or laser printer. The colors are burned onto material varying from paper to cloth. Alignment, image resolution, and expert coloring are all done for the artist. The digital process, as opposed to more senior processes, produces posters faster and sometimes crisper.

Despite the more modern poster art methods, a lot of forethought and artistic method goes into production. A poster from 2006 can be just as striking as a poster from 1966 or 1896. After all, when we look at the finished product, we are also looking at someone's mental process.