It is illustrated with over 150 works from the collection of Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, including a diverse range of posters, from avant-garde classics and rarely seen international works to contemporary pieces by today’s leading graphic designers. Now that the exhibition has ended, the How Posters Work catalog is a permanent visual record of this outstanding show and a forever keepsake, whether you’ve seen the show or not. Lupton is a 2007 recipient of the AIGA Gold Medal, one of the highest honors given to a graphic designer or design educator in the US. In addition to authoring numerous articles on design, she is also the author of Thinking with Type, a beautiful, informative, highly-regarded book used by students, designers, and educators worldwide. Ellen Lupton is a curator of contemporary design at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City, as well as Director of the Graphic Design MFA program at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore. This book is a catalog of her curated poster show of the same name, which was recently held at Cooper Hewitt Museum in New York City. One person who knows all about posters is Ellen Lupton, author of How Posters Work. Despite the rise of digital media, the print poster remains a vital, and oftentimes radical, form of visual communication.

As a medium of communication, the poster has a long history and a wide range of social functions, from selling a product to promoting an event or a cause. The best posters are designed to relay information in a manner that appeals to the intended audience in an eye-catching, engaging way. They combine type, image, and color to convey a message or an idea. Posters are one of the most exciting, expressive forms of communication in the world of graphic design.

Graphic Design by Ellen Lupton