Swiss designer Dafi Kühne is a poster zealot. A zealot is a fanatic, a keeper of convictions, protector of traditions and practitioner of rituals. Kühne is furthermore the consummate poster maker of the 21st century. With his dedication to the form, there can be no doubt that Poster Cult is an apt description and title for his new book from Lars Muller Publishers. It is a tome that questions tired preconceptions and rejects worn conventions.
Ultimately, Kühne belongs to two cults: poster making and letterpress printing. For him, this book is multifaceted, as monograph, manifesto and self-examination. This comes through in a section of questions that are central to his practice. For instance:
Why print?
The printed poster is dying. Why posters?
Why typography?
How important are unforeseen incidents in analog printing?
How important is movable type?
Why letterpress?
His answers are rational, not dogmatic cult regurgitation.
He believers that single-use printed matter is not sustainable, but many messages deserve to be printed: “The haptics, the smell, the physical experience has qualities that a digital medium cannot offer—and vice versa.” He adds, “the poster is the supreme form of visual communication: The reduction of complex messages down to a few words. One simple visual concept on one single page.”
Moreover, “a poster can be so many things: that functional piece of visual communication and intervention in our public space—wheatpasted legally or illegally, brand new or faded and age, tagged and sprayed by teenagers, loved or hated—and most definitely not forever. It is a part of our culture.”
Kühne’s posters are not stylistically consistent, nor are they always legible. “Legibility is relative,” he says. “I don’t believe that pure legibility is the primary goal of a good typographic poster.” However, since his work begins by wrestling with language, “a good poster cannot be created without a well-formulated message.” For his process, “the first step is always to play with possible words. Not all the words and formulations supplied by clients are coherent and sacrosanct.” And he’s right. He also continues ideas hailing from Futurism and Dada, and more recently ’80s–’90s New Typography, but with materials and hardware that date to the dawn of commercial art in the late 19th century.
Poster Cult is indeed smartly designed, with one optimally printed full-page poster per spread, and useful citation on the opposite page. With an introductory historically insightful profile by Angelina Lippert, director of Poster House New York (which collects Kühne’s work), and an afterword by Christian Brändle—who explains why Kühne is “high priest” of the letterpress poster cult—this volume is as engaging to read as it is to savor the craft and typographic wonder of these luminous posters.
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