Posters can be traced as far back as the 15th century. Artisans made each and every sheet by hand. Even though the process was painstaking, it brought forth a new age of news, announcements, and other information to people on the streets.

Mainly, news and information was distributed to the populace through the Town Crier. The town criers traveled the streets and would stop at crossroads, announcing the orders and news from the King or the Church. They announced everything from burials, goods, convocations, lost objects, and other items.

Eventially In 1539, the "poster" began to slowly replace the town criers.

In 1789, the French revolution caused a virtual explosion in the field of communications. The French began to experience "Freedom of the Press", and all of the newspapers began displaying printed advertisements.

The formidable industrial rise of the 19th century ushered in the beginnings of mechanization, which opened a new area in publishing.

The greatest illustrators of the period, Grandville, Raffet, Johannot, Gavarni, and Gilded partnered with the great writers, Hugo, Sand, Dumas, Rabelais, Balzac.



Like most print media, graphic arts were dependent on the invention of the printing press. This allowed for the mass production of all shapes and sizes of posters as well. The technique that is used to print posters, is called lithography. This is printing by placing ink on a series of metal or stone ("lithos") carvings which are really reliefs of color regions on the poster.

The art of Lithography was invented by Czech named Alois Senefelder in 1798 in Austria. By 1848, the process had been refined to the point that it was possible to print 10,000 sheers per hour, however, Jules Cheret was the first person to produce posters in mass through lithography.

While Senefelder pioneered the field of lithography, and certainly many "posters" were created prior to the arrival of Cheret, it is Cheret deserves to be called "the father of the poster". First, his contributions to the technical process made rapid color printing in volume possible. Second, he played a major role in the transformation of the aesthetic nature of the poster, giving it an identity and autonomy from all other fields of pictorial art.