Poster for the 14th Zagreb Fair

Kocmut’s choice of skyscraper as motif is partially related to one of the themes presented at the 14th Zagreb Zbor (“assembly, corporation”, forerunner of the Fair) at the construction fair. At the same time, the skyscraper was a symbol of progress, industry and the modern age, and as such was one of the favourite motifs of Art Déco, one of the names of the style being in fact Skyscraper Style, after the towers that in the twenties sprang up in all the major world cities. The aesthetics of Art Déco is visible in the visual simplicity of the poster, the background of which is monochrome, while the drawing is maximally reduced to the basically identifiable elements. A new approach to the advertising poster as means of conveying the message to the customer, in this case about the holding of the fair, is visible from the initials of the event, the most conspicuous element of the illustration. Other information is clearly divided from the pictorial part and expressed in readable but unpretentious sans-serif typography, which in the post-war period became popular again after having been used relatively limitedly in the 19th century.