Posters in Beirut

From the Association Typographie Internationale conference in Vancouver this weekend, a description of one presentation:

“A strong plurality of visual typographic styles and rhetorical strategies emerged after the war in Beirut. Lebanese are so sensitive now about the ethnic hatred which sparked off the war that they have been reluctant to speak up about it, yet they are tagging the streets of the city with slogans as a means of expression.

In this presentation Yasmine Taan analyses how ‘untrained designers/typographers’ have chosen the appropriate ‘typefaces’ whose diverse styles powerfully reflect the context of their messages, giving voice to the political aspirations of the inhabitants.”

A preface to this can be seen in the images of political posters in the American University of Beirut Jafet Library Poster Collection.

The posters were collected from the 1960s through the 1980s, before and during the war, from their original sources and from the American University of Beirut campus where they were posted. The collection covers two main topics: the Palestinian Question, and Lebanon and the Lebanese Civil War.

A few images are online, organized as follows:

• Palestine Liberation Organization
• Other Palestinian Organizations
• The Lebanese Left
• The Progressive Socialist Party
• The South and the Resistance
• The Lebanese Right