Playboys, Paycocks and Playbills

When Toulouse-Lautrec was asked to design a series of posters for the Moulin Rogue back in 1891, the worlds of art and advertising collided in a way previously unthinkable. Art, once saved for nothing more than gallery walls and the collections of connoisseurs, was now being exploited for its commercial appeal to the masses. Some rejoiced, many gasped in horror, but the trend was largely set for the next hundred odd years in the art world: Warhol's Campbell Soup cans were the next, and inevitable, step.

But if Toulouse-Lautrec put the uncouth advertising poster into the limelight, we can only thank him for doing so. Some of the most perfect specimens of design from the past hundred years are in fact just that: type vintage posters into Google images and you'll be bombarded with an array of bold, bright and beautiful examples. Several have become so iconic they're emblazoned across fridge magnets and key-rings in tourist shops across the city - "Guinness is Good For You", squark those toucans in their nest.

But whilst the black stuff may have inspired the most famous poster campaigns to come from Ireland, Guinness aren't the only Dubliners to have put the humble poster to good use. In fact, a collection of posters from that other all-important Irish institution, the Abbey Theatre, is about to be exhibited at Draiocht. The Blanchardstown cultural space will be showcasing a series of the theater's best poster designs from the seventies and eighties until November 6.

Posters for plays by the likes of Sean O'Casey and Brian Friel have been borrowed from the archives of the National Print Museum for this unique exhibition, which should be well worth popping along to for theatre buffs and design geeks alike. The range of styles and changes in graphic approaches that unfold as you view the collection demonstrate brilliantly the once-ignored virtues of poster design. Cheers to good ol' Toulouse-Lautrec, then.

Words Rosalind Abbott