Poster Boy
How Abram Games revolutionised the visual language of the poster to become one of the most influential graphic designers of the twentieth-century
Illustrator, Abram Games defined British wartime visual culture with his informational posters produced during the Second World War. His bold and innovative style would make him one of the most sought-after and prominent graphic designers of the post-war years, with the famous Festival of Britain logo and the first television ident for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) among the most seen, genuinely iconic, designs of the mid-twentieth-century.
The uncluttered clarity of his visual communication set him aside from predecessors and most of his contemporaries. He believed the poster was the medium for strong messages, simply conveyed. Or, as he summed that up with his guiding motto, ‘minimum means, maximum meaning’. The key to a good poster, he revealed, was to design small. He would sketch out his ideas for posters at a size smaller than a playing card. If the information and concept couldn’t be communicated effectively at that scale, then it wouldn’t work at a distance when produced as a large poster. After all, a playing card held at arm’s length is about the size most people would see a poster on a waiting room wall or across the street.
