Maja Allenbach – Avant-Garde Graphics

Graphic designer and illustrator Maja Allenbach (1907–2002) attended the specialist graphic design course at Allgemeine Gewerbeschule Basel (AGS) from 1929 to 1930. In the early 1930s, she began working with architect Werner Allenbach (1903–1975) in a shared studio in Bern. The two later married. Allenbach was a trailblazer in the use of photo posters in Switzerland. Herbert Matter had united photography and typography, creating a new aesthetic in tourism poster design, and Allenbach further advanced this design method, incorporating it into consumer poster designs. Her ads for Astra margarine and Stalden pudding, made using photographs by Ernst A. Heiniger and Gotthard Schuh, reveal her avant-garde design tendencies.