Swiss Design — Zurich Made

For around 100 years the Museum of Design Zurich has been commissioning posters for all its temporary exhibitions, amounting altogether to 1,600 different works. With posters by Ernst Keller, Max Bill, Josef Müller-Brockmann, Ralph Schraivogel and many others, the museum has produced, in quick succession, icons of Swiss poster design and gained the prestige and responsibility of an important patron. What makes these posters really stand out is the special, perhaps even unique relationship between the museum as commissioner and the designers, and the ensuing concept of corporate design, which has led to remarkable solutions. All this springs from the self-image of the museum which has developed around ideas of thematic openness, experimentation and curiosity. In the key subject areas of design, architecture, visual communication, everyday culture, photography, art and media, «design» in the wider sense of the word is also always regarded as a social, economic and political statement. This notion does not stop at the presentation of design achievements, but it also involves the conditions under which design is created and achieves its impact. The thematic commitment has fostered a collaboration of a special quality between the curators as commissioners and the poster designers, marked by mutual respect. For every poster the museum uses both young and established graphic designers. It deliberately dispenses with specifications in terms of corporate design; instead, the focus is on high printing quality (silkscreen or offset). Overall, the resulting posters reflect the diversity of the exhibition programme and the endless possibilities of graphic expression. The commissioning system and the close collaboration between the designers, the communications team and the curators have regularly generated icons of poster culture and, inevitably, also spawned some pitifully weak results. The works shown here are the most recent examples from the Museum of Design Zurich's poster history. All posters created thus far can be seen at eMuseum.ch.