Bata

The first original poster designed by Donald Brun for the Czechoslovakian shoe manufacturer Bata, which was honored in 1947 by the Department of the Interior as one of the 24 best Swiss posters of the year for its wit and ingenuity: The legendary grasshopper—suggesting lightness of foot and deeply impressed by the canvas shoe with a rubber sole.

Primarily creating advertisements for products, the Basel-based artist Brun (1909–1999) repeatedly drew on animals or figures that told a story behind the mundane object—in a seductive and often even witty way —though Brun neither pursued his own agenda nor allowed himself to be dictated to by the various, more or less lofty ideas of his time (first magical realism, then the conceptual Zurich and Basel schools) regarding how to implement them. What mattered most to him were the needs of his clients. This made him one of the first leading representatives of those graphic designers who saw themselves as service providers, not (any longer) as artists (granted, Otto Baumberger from Zurich had already reached that point a generation before Brun, albeit for different reasons—but Baumberger was, after all, Baumberger, who is not without reason considered a maverick, ahead of his time and paving the way for others).

However, it must also be noted that this approach was essential for Bruns in the age of mass production, when commercial posters were intended to secure the bulk of his income. Only those who worked primarily for cultural or (semi-)governmental clients could afford to be wary of consumer advertising and develop their own distinctive style.

Tomas Bata, for his part, is essentially the Henry Ford of the shoe industry, whose rise began in the early 20th century thanks to the production of canvas shoes with rubber soles. When Switzerland sharply increased import tariffs and restricted imports in 1931 in the wake of the Great Depression, he decided to build a factory in Möhlin, in the canton of Aargau. In July 1932, two days before the opening, he boarded his private plane to visit the new production facility and persuaded his pilot to take off despite the fog. The plane collided with a factory chimney; both occupants died in the crash.

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