The Swiss Poster Collection at Carnegie Mellon University :
The Swiss Poster Collection at Carnegie Mellon University is a critical selection of more than 300 works representing the Swiss Posters of the Year competition and other Swiss posters from 1971 to the present. The collection is for students, teachers, scholars, and the general viewer to explore the art of the poster and its leading expression in Swiss graphic design.
This collection of Swiss graphic design and poster art. It represents a tradition in transition. Swiss posters of the 1950s and 1960s illustrate the “Swiss School” or the “Swiss Style,” relying heavily on composition, typography, and clear communication. This “style” had international influence, and the Swiss poster came to be regarded as a model in graphic design.
In the 1970s, however, Swiss graphic design and poster art began to change — not in quality but in direction and vision. Designers, critics, and historians of design suggest many factors for the future changes, including changing tastes, rising quality in other countries, the decline of artistic personalities, commercial influence, and so forth.
What is clear, however, is that Swiss poster art remained at a high level of quality and expressive force and continues to attract worldwide attention. Indeed, the study of Swiss posters in the period represented by the collection at Carnegie Mellon offers special insight into many of the cross-currents affecting all graphic design in this period.
