I found a book the other day, on Polish poster art. I don't know if you're aware of this, but Poland has the best poster art in the entire world. I first realized this when looking at the posters for Polish films (a marvelous film country that I am just in the process of discovering), loving them and seeing a stylistic throughline.
I then discovered that there was a whole world of polish poster art, from posters for international mainstream films (the inferior American originals replaced with superior Polish art) to music and theater.
According to my book, this type of poster art was able to develop starting in the 1950's in Poland, because these posters didn't really need to advertise, just represent. And represent they do. They are simple, striking devices of compressed storytelling that I have grown to love and admire.
I'd want all my films to have Polish style posters. Not sure if I could get this idea past my frequent collaborators, but that's the dream anyway.
Regrettably, writing this, I just found a shop selling Polish posters. They sell so much stuff I obviously, desperately need! I will be so poor!
Now, to illustrate my point about Polish poster art being simple, effective, beautiful and striking, let me demonstrate that statement using some of the images contained in the book I found:
