Analysing Graphic Archives with AI
Poster Reading Room, A Prototype for the Description and Critical Exploration of a Corpus of Posters
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.82068/pgjournal.2026.23.43.10Keywords:
Graphic Design History, AI-Assisted Visual Analysis, Graphic Design Archives, Posters, Vision-Language Models (VLM)Abstract
The contribution offers a methodological reflection on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in the study of archival materials for graphic design history, with particular attention to posters as a type of visual artefact through which to develop an initial analytical framework. Starting from the lack of shared standards for the description of graphic artefacts and the growing availability of archival collections undergoing digitisation, the paper examines a number of case studies devoted to the AI-assisted analysis of visual materials of different kinds. On this basis, it discusses the development of a prototype platform – Poster Reading Room – specifically designed for the cataloguing and AI-assisted analysis of historical posters. The system brings together metadata import, description, analysis, internal comparison within the corpus, and the production of structured outputs through AI models – always with human verification and validation. It thus functions as a mediating device, supporting the whole descriptive process without replacing the researcher's critical judgement. The proposal does not aim to present a definitive tool, but rather to outline a preliminary operational framework, assessing its potential and limitations in relation to the construction of an analytical workflow applicable to digitised visual collections, each with its own specific characteristics.
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