This poster by Ralph Schraivogel is an exception. It took four months to create this seemingly simple image. The starting point was the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht (The Night of Broken Glass), a series of coordinated attacks conducted against Jews throughout Germany in November 1938 while the authorities looked on without intervening. To commemorate this tragedy, often described as the beginning of the Holocaust, German chancellor Angela Merkel delivered a powerful speech at a synagogue in Berlin. Immediately after the live broadcast Sacha Wigdorovits, Schraivogel’s long-time client, called to commission a poster inspired by Merkel’s address. The poster was to include a quote by the 18th-century Irish statesman Edmund Burke: ‘Evil prevails when good men fail to act.’

Schraivogel, who teaches at an art school, never throws away his sketches, drafts and rejected proposals. He believes that keeping them and showing them to students has educational value. As a result we have a rare opportunity to see the complete process of a poster’s creation, including the rejection of many versions that other artists might have settled for early on. Schraivogel worked slowly and methodically, exploring the typographic potential embedded in Burke’s quotation. Over 300 steps later Schraivogel arrived at the version that he believed was it.