Photograph, Werbepaneel Bahnhof Zürich, Turmac,

1955

At Zurich’s main station in the late 1950s, the Turmac cigarettes advertisement produced by Atelier Müller-Brockmann hung high above the track head. Young men and women holding cigarettes beamed down happily onto the pedestrians below. A modern lifestyle, with its corresponding graphic image, was the message here, with blown-up black-and-white photos of smokers in various sizes splashed across a banner together with the advertising slogan, printed in several languages in a red sans-serif font. Interrupted by the red Turmac logo in Arabesque style, it seemed to roll by like an American filmstrip. Smoking, which had long been reserved solely for men, had now become acceptable for the female sex as well—ever since the 1929 Lucky Strike campaign in New York that depicted ten notable society women lighting up a Lucky cigarette to help them “stay slender.” Nevertheless, in Switzerland, it took somewhat longer until women dared to smoke in public. For a long time, smoking’s harmful effects were unknown. When, in the late 1950s, Müller-Brockmann learned of the deadly consequences of tobacco consumption, he turned down any further commissions from Turmac. He composed a list of products for which he would not (or no longer) produce advertisements on moral grounds. These included tobacco, alcohol, war toys, weapons, property speculation, and party politics. His belief in the social responsibility of the graphic artist—who wishes to inform rather than to seduce—strengthened his resolve to turn away from purely commercial advertising. (Barbara Junod)