Edited by Museum für Gestaltung Zürich
With an essay by Anita Kühnel
96 pages, 80 illustrations
paperback
2004, 978-3-03778-039-8, German/English

“Straightforward photography, a restrained colour scheme, simple texts set in a functional typeface: these are the formal elements the German Graphic Designer Michael Engelmann drew on to create an unmistakable pictorial language for his posters. He came to advertising self-taught, with a background in American advertising practice.
In the fifties he set about expunging any trace of empty bourgeois enthusiasm from advertising by applying a strictly conceptual working approach. In his posters for Pirelli,The Philadelphia Inquirer, Renault or Roth Händle, images and ideas come together in a way that is as simple as it is compelling, creating signs of great associative force. He made a highly regarded contribution to graphics’ breakthrough into the age of mass communications with wit and a sense of using his esources economically. The present publication brings together numerous osters by this graphic artist, who died in 1966 at the age of only 38.” Lars Müller Publishers