While you can look at pieces of and design and to the untrained eye they look both similar and different. Each designer puts their own touch onto everything that they do. Two designers that can be seen as similar and different are Lucian Bernhard and Edward McKnight Kauffer. Lucian Bernhard was born in Stuttgart, Germany in 1883 and began his career as a designer by studying at Munich Art Academy before going to Berlin in 1901 to work. His career as a prolific designer brought posters, but also trademarks, packaging, type, textiles and much more and it was inspired by the famed Beggarstaffs James Pryde and William Nicolson. In his work the product that was advertised would have the trade name or company name in big letters spread out on a spacious background that was usually a solid color. His ‘Priester’ poster in 1905 was so stark and its colors were startling at that period that it would immediately catch the eye of the viewer. Edward McKnight Kauffer, an American designer who worked primarily in England, born in 1890. His career was inspired by Ludwig Hohlwein’s posters which brought on his works of simple designs. Kauffer’s poster for the Daily Herald in 1918 featured a yellow background with black text found only at the bottom and the top has images of origami like birds to symbolize the caption “Soaring to Success”.

While the two works are not that far off in years there are things that are both similar and different to them. Both designs are rather simple and appeal to the eye. The simplicity in the two are the very basic use of a word and an image against a plain background. However they are different in the way that Kauffer’s poster for the Daily Herald has an intricate version of birds soaring across the top of the page, which is unlike Hohlwin’s two matches seen in the middle of the page. While the Priester poster was apart of the Modern movement, and Kauffer’s poster was in the Futurism movement you still see plenty of what makes the works of two very different designers relatively the same.