Poster Town

Contemporary Poster Design from Lucerne

Lucerne—Switzerland’s poster town—has a vibrant graphic design scene which has become widely known in recent years for its sophisticated posters. Some of these are designed for big cultural events, but others are more local, designed to advertise little theater performances or local music festivals. But the impact of these local designs can be felt further afield: in 2015 alone, 26 of the 100 best posters from Germany, Austria and Switzerland came from Lucerne and the surrounding area—in other words, more than a quarter of all the award-winning works. What’s behind this? How can such a relatively small city produce so many well-designed posters? Poster Town tracks this phenomenon with a wealth of images and texts by curators, art historians and design researchers, and creates a record of Lucerne’s poster designs for posterity.

With texts by Bettina Richter, Pirmin Bossart, Martina Kammermann, and Marc Schwegler

Edited by Erich Brechbühl, Klaus Fromherz, Martin Geel, Michael Kryenbühl, Simon Rüegg, Raphael Schoen, Ivan Weiss, and Megi Zumstein

Designed by Johnson / Kingston

Published by Spector Books, 2018

Bilingual, in German and English

Softcover (thread-sewn cover with plastic jacket), 784 pages, 800 b&w and color images, 6.5 × 8.8 inches

ISBN: 978-3-95905-178-1