Gerard Herbst Poster Collection

The Gerard Herbst Poster Collection contains almost 3000 posters, representing a selection of international design over five decades from the 1950s to the 1990s. It provides an overview of contemporary poster design practice in Europe, with a smaller amount of material from the US, Asia and Australia.

The collection was formed by Gerard Herbst (1911–2011), a former lecturer and head of Industrial Design at RMIT. It was donated to the University of Melbourne by Herbst in 1996. The intention of the gift was to provide young designers, scholars and the general public with the opportunity to learn from the example of excellence in design and to encourage a continuation of the skills involved in artistic poster creation and visual communication through this particular medium.