Poster designer

Affichiste is the French word for a poster artist or poster designer, a graphic designer of posters.

The name affichiste first appeared around 1780, but with a different meaning. It meant one involved in a poster's production and distribution, not its design: in particular, for producing handbills, setting up type and coordinating flyposting on walls, giving news on local and national events on a range of subjects. Usually anonymous, these people are rarely considered artists, nor their products works of art.

At the end of the nineteenth century, poster art became a respectable art form, with the invention of large-scale colour lithography. (Chromolithography made its début around 1870.) Artists such as Jules Chéret and Alfons Mucha became famous within the art world, working almost exclusively on advertisements. Almost simultaneously, all Western countries had their own nascent movements: in Britain, the Arts and Crafts movement, and then the Glasgow School of Art (built by Charles Rennie Mackintosh), and in Chicago, where artist William H. Bradley had worked for an advertising agency.

In France, several famous painters such as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec also worked on poster advertising for products or entertainments. Many illustrators also worked in advertising in addition to their work for illustrated newspapers.

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