Bata

The first Original Poster designed by Donald Brun for the Czechoslovakian shoe manufacturer Bata. In 1947, the Department of Home Affairs named it one of the 24 best Swiss posters of the year for its wit and ingenuity: The legendary grasshopper – suggesting light-footedness and heavily impressed by the canvas shoe with rubber sole.

Primarily advertising products, Brun (1909 – 1999) from Basel repeatedly resorted to animals or figures that told a story behind the profane object, seductive and often even witty – whereby Brun neither pursued his own program nor allowed himself to be dictated by the various more or less noble ideas of his time (first Magical Realism, then the conceptual Zurich and Basel schools) as to what was to be implemented and how. The decisive factor for him was the needs of his customers. This made him one of the first main representatives of those graphic artists who saw themselves as service providers, not (or no longer) as artists (well, Otto Baumberger from Zurich had already reached this stage a generation before Brun, albeit for different reasons – but Baumberger was Baumberger, who is not considered a solitaire for nothing, ahead of his time and paving the way for others).

However, it must also be mentioned that Brun’s attitude was indispensable in times of mass production if the commercial poster was to secure the majority of revenue. Only those who worked primarily for cultural or (semi-)governmental clients could afford to be afraid of contact with consumer advertising and create their own signature.

Tomas Bata, for his part, is the Henry Ford of the shoe industry, whose rise began at the beginning of the 20th century thanks to the production of canvas shoes with rubber soles. When Switzerland sharply increases import duties in 1931 in the wake of the global economic crisis and restricts imports, he decids to build a factory in Möhlin, Aargau. In July 1932, two days before the opening, he climbs into his private plane to visit the new production facility and persuads his pilot to take off despite the fog. The plane collides with a factory chimney, both occupants die in the crash.

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