Uwe Loesch s posters have a strong meaning, without a predefined visual style, his work reveals an intellectual posture with innovative ideas when it comes to communicating a message. The historical and socio-political conditions of the country where a person lives are revealed in their behavior, beliefs and therefore in the style of their work. Uwe Loesch was born in Dresden, Germany in 1943 and studied graphic design at the Peter-Behrens Academy at D sseldorf from 1964-1968. Growing up in the post war Germany, obviously affected the way he perceives and transmits ideas. Loesch s primary medium is the poster since as it is known historically, it is the most elementary carrier of word and image, providing popular means to illustrate aesthetic change and social and political history. Posters have been present in Germany s history from Jugendstil to Post-Modernism and through two world wars. His posters have no particular style, their effectiveness depends not on word or image independently, but on the meaning or meanings that derive from their interaction. Ambiguous use of words, visual disappointment , wordplay and allusions are some of the resources he uses to blend imagery and type into one concept. Loesch's ideal conceptualism is achieved by a mixture of his personal German bourgeoisie upbringing and the feeling of political responsibility, raising public awareness. His work began to appear in the early 1980 s, and almost instantly attracted the critics attention by his mastery of the typographic and photographic skills. After having received many prizes and worldwide recognition he currently is a communication design professor at the University of Wuppertal in Germany.

In Loesch s posters we can observe how they attract the eye and still take some time to deliver the full charge of meanings. Some examples of how he employs the different graphic and linguistic resources are more evident than others. However, his work is directed at respecting communication as an independent factor in man's social existence rather than manipulating it. Loesch attempts real experience from the spectators with linguistic resources such as the ambiguous use of words, wordplay and allusions in his constant assailment of communication. When interpreting each one of his pieces it should be taken into consideration that part of the wit and meanings would inevitably be lost in the translation from German to English.

In his billboard poster Punktum (see image #1 from appendix), we can appreciate the ambiguous use of a word. This ad was produced for two clients, a printer and a reproduction company that had introduced a system for producing large scaled color halftones in a single scan. Loesch uses the image of the enlarged halftone screen to demonstrate the process of production that is being advertised and also comments the process of perception, which allows the human eye to fuse the points into an image. Punktum means period or stop in German and implies enough said . He draws attention to this meaning by following the one word headline with a period. The word can also be read as a caption for the image (a beauty spot) which is like the rest of the spots on the surface. It is interesting to mention that the German for spot is punkt. Here we can observe how with only one word he gets five different meanings and all are related to the main theme.

Another resource commonly used by Uwe Loesch is visual disappointment . This is when, for example, the viewer expects a rectangle, but it is confronted with a square. The spectator then has to adjust to the idea of an implied perspective, which he was not counting on at his first glance. This is the case of the poster for the Cologne Academy of Media Arts (see image #2 from the appendix), where a square was placed halfway up the height of the poster and slightly displaced towards the left. Usually, the viewer would expect it to have been placed on the center. According to Loesch, this form is the sum of all images because it is flat and three-dimensional at the same time.

Another visual disappointment is the use of lines of type that are not parallel to the edge...
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