Introduction: Typography has played a major role in our history, from scribes with handwritten texts to the invention of printing, in through its use on our personal computers in word processing and designing programs in our daily lives (Ben Barrett-Forrest, 2013, np [online video]). Although many people will never understand the importance of typography, it is a very important part of graphic design. Typography, from a graphic design perspective, will make or break a design and is the deciding factor between good and bad design. Typography is used in many areas of graphic design; information graphics, corporate identities, logos, web designs and many more, but the area where I want to discuss the importance of typography is poster design. Although posters can be purely visual, you will rarely encounter a poster without some form of wording or typography. It is for this reason that I want to base my essay on this: posters are used to announce events, products and are also used to present information, and this information cannot be represented without the use of a good typography. Looking at the poster designs of Jules Chéret and Henri Toulouse Lautrec, the posters of Nazi propaganda and American war recruiting, as well as the more recent work of graphic designer Paula Scher, I want to show how the physical style and the appearance of the type has changed, but its use has remained the same although some posters are more effective than others simply because of the typography used. By taking this knowledge and then looking at the basic framework of how to design a poster and use typography "properly" in today's day and age, we are still using the same methods as designers before us. The posters are supposed to attract our attention. attention, convey information...... middle of paper ...... thanks to the trial and error of poster designers over the years, we were able to come up with a simple algorithm for creating good posters, which simply needs to be read and understood for the design to be good and visually appealing. Propaganda posters from the World Wars were a good starting point to see how the physical forms of type changed, supporting the ideas discussed in the short film History of Typography. We then see how the posters do a complete 180 degree turn when it comes to Chéret and Lautrec, then Scher, where typography is used as a counterbalance to the visuals, and then evolve to actually become the visuals themselves. Then the fact that a company publishes such an in-depth guide to typography proves its importance in graphic design, because a bad design will not be as successful as a good, clear design..