National theatre posters: a design history
- Submitting institution
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The University of Reading
: B - Typography and Graphic Communication
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory : B - Typography and Graphic Communication
- Output identifier
- 73110
- Type
- A - Authored book
- DOI
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- Publisher
- Unit Editions
- ISBN
- 9780995666436
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- -
- Year of publication
- 2017
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- For more than 50 years, the National Theatre has used posters to promote and give visual expression to an enormous range of productions. While other major arts organisations also utilise posters, the NT is unusual in having maintained an in-house design studio for most of its history. Over this time, just five individuals have been responsible for the posters: Ken Briggs, Richard Bird, Michael Mayhew, Charlotte Wilkinson and Ollie Winser. This is a rare example of long-term institutional commitment to graphic design and creative continuity. National Theatre Posters analyses significant examples of posters by all five designers. The three living designers were interviewed, as well as four colleagues who worked with Briggs and Bird. The NT has an extensive archive, which houses copies of many hundreds of posters, so I was able to examine the entire output from the theatre’s earliest days to the present. I searched the NT’s photographic records for examples of posters in use and consulted supporting materials such as theatre programmes, which the designers also created. I undertook a review of published accounts of the NT posters (mainly in the press), as well as the literature dealing with the history of the theatre poster. This is the first book devoted to a history of NT posters and it presents both a close examination of the designers’ methods and graphic styles – typographic, illustrative and photographic – and a comprehensive visual survey. The analysis reveals how changes of style reflect the designers’ temperaments and skills, the fashions of the moment and changing conceptions of effective communication for the theatre’s audiences. The book is both a case study of design practice at an institution central to British cultural life and a history of the way the poster as a medium has evolved in Britain over the last half-century.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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