“100 beste Plakate” (100 best Posters) is a yearly presentation of selected posters from Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. As the posters from the years 2001–2024 are archived on this website, it is a valuable resource for visual design research. Here, I analyze the posters with the help of machine learning to explore and discover interesting features and tendencies.
Why is DIN portrait preferred? It is a format that is very much suggested by the printers, certainly also by the media agencies that distribute the posters on city walls. Designers may prefer the format because it has a tension between top and bottom which is very expressive, i.e. it is very easy to establish a hierarchy through space. Finally, the upright format responds to the standing, upright passersby.
It might not come as a surprise that a significant portion of posters have red and yellow as dominant colors. These are the most attention grabbing. Furthermore, blue is dominant. Blue is often seen as a safe bet, as per its “neutrality”. Much less green. And, what is strking not many poster are dominantly violet. Why? Violet is also the color of the feminist movement. Is this a hint to a male dominated design scene? An interesting research question!
All poster were analysed as greyscale images.
