NATIONAL THEATRE POSTERS – A Design History – Rick Poynor (Uniteditions.com – ISBN: 978–0–9956664–3–6)
If there is one aspect of theatre that has always enthralled me through the years it is ‘the poster’.
I collected posters for many productions throughout the years, and have actually started to sell them through my own website, so you can imagine my excitement when I was offered a copy of the National Theatre’s poster book to review. The enthusiasm was certainly not wasted as I tentatively opened this marvellous piece of theatrical history.
Of course, the book includes posters throughout the years from the company’s first base at the Old Vic in 1963 to the latest NT Live productions in 2017.
It is a cornucopia of riches from designers Ken Briggs, Richard Bird, Michael Mayhew, Charlotte Wilkinson and the Graphic Design Studio. Not only that, there are 34 pages of story involving the design processes and how they have evolved through the years to take in to account the changing face of productions and audience tastes.
The whole fantastic tome is written and compiled by Rick Poynor (writer, lecturer and curator, and professor of Design and Visual Culture at the University of Reading).
He has written extensively on the history of British visual communication. His books about the subject include Typographica (2001) and Communicate: Independent British Graphic Design since the Sixties (2004). Poynor was the founding editor of Eye magazine and his work has appeared in Eye, Blueprint, Frieze, Creative Review, Icon, Domus and many other publications.
This is one of those books you hungrily read and devour and then can’t stop picking up and randomly looking through. Every time you do this you find some new nuance in the posters that you didn’t notice the first, or even second, time round. I have had it sitting on my desk for the past week and I still can’t help but pick it up at every spare minute and study what have become iconic theatre poster designs through the years.
It normally costs £35 but I believe (at the time of writing this review) it is on offer through the National Theatre bookshop and website at £25. And, believe me, it is worth every last penny!
Nick Wakeham
www.shop.nationaltheatre.org.uk
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