The 100 BEST POSTERS 22: Germany Austria Switzerland competition is one of the foremost trendsetters in contemporary poster design. That the latter involves significantly more than uploading visual content onto public billboards is once more demonstrated by this year’s exhibition series of the 100 Best.
 
A veritable gamut of typographical concepts awaits the visitor, from perfectly spaced typeface to a complete disregard of all typographical tenets. The spectrum ranges from revitalized typewriter scripts, to spidery handwriting, to experimental approaches, for example incorporating artificial intelligence into the design process. In their design and layout, the scripts recall the Concrete Poetry of the Vienna Group: letters no longer signify; they are experienced as images. Against all expectations, this year there is a noticeable dearth of politically motivated entries.
 
663 entries comprising a total of 2 298 posters were submitted for the competition. After an online preselection process, this year’s jury members— Barbara Kotte (Chair, Berlin), Yvo Hählen (Lausanne), Thomas Kronbichler (Bolzano), Wolfgang Ortner (Linz), and Antonia Terhedebrügge (Berlin) —were presented with 383 posters from which to make the final selection. 48 of the winning posters and poster series come from Germany and 43 from Switzerland. For Austrian entrants it has once again been a very successful year: 9 posters made it into the 100 Best.