In addition, commercial poster printing offered a new medium for advertisers and artists alike who wasted no time experimenting with this new art form (Johnson21). The graceful lines seen in Art Nouveau were an expression of a new graphic style. Poster design was the beginning of modern promotional advertising. Art Nouveau letter styles such as Munich and Jugendstil were based on plant like forms. Hand lettering styles like Walhal and Phaeton created unique faces that were used in poster advertising. "Linotype and Monotype improved print technology" (Johnson 84). The improvements made to printing increased the quality of the posters in the nineteenth century allowing lettering to become more legible. Poster design in the eighteen nineties combined typography and illustration to create a striking graphic layout. "Art Nouveau had qualities for intended visual experiences that were to be important to the twentieth century" (Johnson 98). Dramatic paintings or rich illustrations dominated the center area. Informational text outlining a product or event was usually placed towards the lower half of the piece. Many Eastern artists of this period used curved forms of vegetation. Favourite flowers were the lily, the iris and the orchid but they also used oriental subjects such as palm branches and seaweed. Stylists also used animals, similar to the west, especially insects and birds with a vast range of colours including dragonflies, peacocks, swallows, and swans. The artists also seemed to appreciate the female body more as a decorative element, especially with long open hair, flowing in long and soft. The basic elements of Art Nouveau are the colour, the glass and the light, for interior decoration additionally soft wood of honey colour, in the architecture the iron. The combination of these elements creates an effect of fantasy, lightness, even instability. This new style exaggerated the vivid contrast between the works, even if much decorated, of the gloomier early period.
