Sat.Jan 30, 2010 - Fri.Feb 05, 2010

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The 21st Century Object Poster

Fonts by Hoefler&Co.

In 1906, the Priester Match Company held an open contest for the design of a poster. Art Nouveau was in full flower, so surely the judges expected to receive decadent renderings of languid smokers, things perhaps in the style of Toulouse-Lautrec or Alphonse Mucha. What none of them expected was a shockingly bold drawing of two matchsticks, almost antagonistically free of nuance: this winning entry , by a twenty-three year old designer named Lucian Bernhard, would come to be recognized as the wor

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