ABSTRACT
Inevitably, changes in the worlds of art and graphic design effected changes in political-poster design. Eighteenth-century political broadsides used capital letters and bold, large type for emphasis, and occasionally included visuals. Currier and Ives produced lithographic portraits of presidential candidates and banner-posters that were used in US election campaigns in the nineteenth century. Political illustrators, especially Thomas Nast in post-Civil War America, created woodcut images that became symbols of political parties and even countries: the Democratic Party’s donkey; the Republican Party’s elephant; Uncle Sam for the United States; and John Bull for England. The lithographic posters designed in France by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec in the 1890s, to promote the Moulin Rouge and other cafes, were influenced by Japanese woodcuts and featured large, bright areas of primary colours and silhouettes (Haill, 1998). The political posters in the next decades sustained many of these developments, which also incorporated innovative typography.
