The 21st Century Object Poster  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 world’s first Sachplakat, or “object
poster.” It was arguably one of the most important design
artifacts of the twentieth century, and came to define an entire
approach to design that lives on in everything from corporate
logos to desktop icons.  104 years later, Austrian designer
Albert Exergian has explored this ever-modern idea in the
creation of a marvelous set of posters offering witty reductions
of television shows. Some of them have Bernhard’s brash
disregard for subtlety (Twin Peaks