The posters that matter from Chaumont Design Graphique 2015

30 Nov / 2015 / Inspiration /

It was back in 1905 when Gustave Dutailly, parliamentary representative of the Haute-Marne, bequeathed an astonishing collection of more than 5000 posters to the town of Chaumont. The development and completion of this extraordinary collection are at the origin of the first Poster Festival founded by Cyril de Rouvre (Mayor of Chaumont from 1989 to 1995) and Thierry Simon in 1990. Since then Chaumont has been striving to be the capital of graphic design with the town’s International Poster and Graphic Design Festival which has become a must-attend event for the graphic-design community. Designers from all over the world are invited to enter the yearly International Poster Competition that has been organized every year since and is an unmissable attraction for graphic-design professionals and enthusiasts, hosting about 25,000 visitors during its four-week duration.

“Posters will become an obsolete medium if their contemporary embedding is not constantly renewed, if their relation to the world and the topical forms are not reasserted” one reads on the festival’s official page. “Just like posters themselves, poster competitions will become an outmoded model if they merely serve the auto-celebration of a happy few and the insistent needs of observers of printed matter.

... Poster making and graphic design are sometimes like combat sports where economic and cultural precariousness allow all sorts of blows. Poster competitions are not matches, but rather and more than ever necessary to value a profession, a pedagogy, the mechanics in the commission process, the relations between designers, clients, printers... The medium of these competitions is the poster, not only because it represents the graphic object that can be shown the most evidently but also because it is the most public object.

... Each poster participating in the international competition expresses the designer’s conviction and commitment to their profession and art. The competition is a place for expression and sharing, that we hope to be open and reflecting the present. The reply is your responsibility”. We present you with some of the highlighted projects in this year’s event.

1 Colophon - David Bennewith 2 Bart de Baets