Poster power: Artists bring the collection to life

It may at first seem unusual that a hand-drawn car boot sale advert, a call to action for a protest march and a government notice promoting pet passports could sit together inside one collection. The fact that this diversity can be found in the posters held at the National Library of Scotland is exactly what makes this archive such a unique resource.

The poster collections

This collection is a visual scrapbook. It covers the different art movements, photographic techniques, typeface styles and graphic designs that artists have employed over the past two hundred years to make a point to passers-by.

Though a few of the collection’s oldest posters have been digitised, the size of the collection and copyright restrictions mean the only way to see most of the posters is in person. In this digitally saturated modern age, consulting creative resources in person is fast becoming more significant to the artistic community.

For the budding artist or the graphic designer stumped for inspiration, the emporium of visual material at the Library should be a key calling point. With the support of Library staff, creatives can consult these treasure chests of visual styles from bygone eras, and find the inspiration for their next project.

When artists meet the archive

We worked with Edinburgh College's School of Art & Design students on a project to increase awareness of the posters in the Library's collection to wider audiences. Students explored some examples from the physical and digitised collections of posters and were shown how to navigate the relevant online resources. They were then given a creative brief: to create a work of art in response to a poster or posters in the collection.

These artists created some truly stunning artistic responses. At the end of the project, many of these young artists agreed to donate their posters to the Library. In a fitting cycle, the posters created to respond to the collection entered the collection themselves! It is hard to think of a better way to demonstrate how the collection of Scotland’s history of print design is a living, growing thing.

Everyday objects, big feelings

One of the artists is Andy Cuerdon, who mixes traditional and digital media for a personal and distinctive feel. Andy describes their poster as "advertising the existence of the collection generally, and the text at the bottom asks people some questions that I think seeing the collection itself provoked for me".

They wanted the poster to look like a stylised page from a mail order catalogue in the nineties. After extensive research finding pictures of old hairdryers, Andy made the poster in Illustrator and Photoshop. Although the hairdryers are from the eighties onwards, they chose colours, effects, and typefaces that were reminiscent of the aesthetics they remember from late nineties catalogues. This was designed to give the poster a cohesive look, and to maximise nostalgia.

A Library talk about what makes it into the archives and why also inspired Andy's poster. It made them think about how context can change relationships and interpretations of an item. At the talk, attendees were drawn to the mail order catalogues, looking up toys they had as kids and comparing notes. But it wasn't just toys. People were even interested in which appliances they had had.

One attendee was moved to tears by discovering her late mother's hair dryer for sale in a catalogue from the eighties, since she hadn’t seen it for well over twenty years. To Andy, this story perfectly captured how meaningful archives can be to everyone, not just researchers. "The catalogues felt like a time travel," Andy says. "The things in them had been completely forgotten because they seemed so mundane."

Illustrating the depths

Sophie Brown, an artist whose main practice is illustration, wanted her poster to be a contemporary take on the encyclopaedic posters from the '90s. She was especially thinking of one she had on the wall at her Gran's house. With the scope of the brief being so open, Sophie wanted the poster to celebrate the idea of collection, while also choosing a subject she was passionate about. "The library boasts an impressive marine biology collection," she said. "I was particularly drawn to the Scottish Marine Biology Association's records and knew these could create some really interesting imagery."

Drawing from this collection, and encyclopaedic posters of flora and fauna, Sophie's poster showcases aquatic animals native to the West Coast and the Hebrides. These are carefully hand-illustrated in pencil and fine liner.

Cut, paste, and protest

Graphic design student Suky Goodfellow immediately felt a connection to a poster advertising a 'Rock Against Poll Tax' poster at the Wee Red Bar. Having played there with their band, they were excited to see an event from another generation there. Suky said, "The battle against The Poll Tax was won, so it's easy for those of us who don't remember it to forget how hard ordinary people had to fight to have it rescinded, but this poster reminded me of that."

Inspired by the poster and what it represented, they opted for a monochrome, handmade style in their artistic response. Suky wanted to use techniques that the designer of the 'Rock Against the Poll Tax' poster could have used. This involved working with collaged text, drawing by hand, mixing materials, and photocopying. They also chose classic fonts that were in use in 1990. The poster was also inspired by years of reading 'The Beano'. A big fan of the popular comic, it influenced the style of the illustrations in Suky's poster.

Completing the creative loop

So, what happens when young artists dive into a poster archive? The answer is that the archive doesn’t just inspire new ideas, it can actively expand through them.

What began as an exploration of the Library’s poster collection became something richer: a conversation across generations of design. Students didn’t just look back, they looked through the posters, finding stories, emotions and unexpected connections that resonated with their own lives and practices.

In that beautifully circular way, these new posters now sit alongside the material that sparked them. The archive that shaped their work has grown because of it, proof that collections are never static. They shift, expand and recontextualise as new voices join the story.

The posters created through this project pay tribute to the history of print in Scotland. But they also become part of its future. And who knows? Perhaps, years from now, another artist will stumble upon these pieces in the stacks, feel a spark of recognition, and begin the cycle all over again.