The poster in circulation: Graphic response to political change in Eastern Europe

This project examines the poster and graphic design production in (geopolitical) Eastern Europe during the 1950s and 60s, the circulation of design and archives. Taking the events surrounding Budapest 1956 and Prague 1968 as pivotal moments of social and political rupture, where the poster was both graphic response and agent of change. Considering the concurrent rapid professional expansion of graphic design around the world, the development of design discourse, publications and participation in nascent biennials of graphic design – as design(ers) circulated so too did the poster and its meanings. As such, this period provides a means to examine the fulcrum position of the poster itself as an expression of culture. Communicating through metaphor and symbolism, graphic designers in post-war Hungary and Czechoslovakia worked within and around censorship. In carrying out a close reading of the environment of graphic design and its materials in these places has revealed some gaps in knowledge. While posters existed ephemerally in the street, it is in their collection and archiving that we can further study this period today. This project queries archival practices and promotes its emancipatory potential to enrich contemporary understandings of design, to value posters as cultural artefacts and for the valuation of graphic design as cultural heritage. This study is also a means to challenge the canon of design history of ‘centre’ vs ‘peripheral’ sites of production, to bring wider representation of graphic design voices to the fore and build recognition for design in East Central Europe. In doing so creates multiple and diverse histories of design, recognising the important mechanisms and processes of the professionalisation of design, in circulation, between these to two locations