In late 1958 Bettler, now twenty-nine, was commissioned by Burgwald-based pharmaceuticals manufacturer Pfafferli + Huber AG to design a running series of posters celebrating the company's fiftieth anniversary. He was already aware of reports concerning P + H’s involvement in testing carried oul on prisoners in concentration camps less than fifteen years before, and when the telephone call came, was about fo fell this would-be client to “...go to hell. But fortunately the wheels in the brain were faster back then [...]. In that split of a second I had the feeling that I could do some real damage.”
Bettler accepted the commission - a decision which cost him several left-wing friends. “ But I knew I could win them back later. The agony was biding my lime. When I said yes fo the job,I had no idea how subversion could work with a large client who would check everything over and over. The first set of posters gave P + H exactly what they wanted: a new style of design. ”
Early the following year a second set of posters were presented, one by one over a series of meetings, for the clien's approval. Only afler they had been printed did Bettler’s masterplan come fo fruition : “ T he beauty of it was thal, taken alone, each poster was ulferly inoffensive. But you must remember that everything has a Zusammenhang; a context. These posters would be seen together in horizontal rows. And I was very careful with my briefing of the bill stickers. ”
On hundreds of sites around Burgwald and neighboring Sumisdorf, the posters appeared in fours. In the first a clowning child's body made an “ N " ; in the second a woman's head was bowed inside the “ A ”-shaped triangle of her forearms. An old man's contortions in the third poster (“ that took forever fo shoot ”) sketched a “ Z. ” No prizes for guessing that the girl in the final plakat stood defiantly still, her almost silhouetted profile as stiff as, well, a letter “ I, ” for example.
– “ I’mOnly a Designer " : the Double Life of Ernst Bettler, Christopher Wilson, Dot Dot Dot #2, 2001
Ernst Bettler Poster for Präfferli + Huber Pharmaceuticals, 1959, Silkscreen print, 154 x 112.3 cm