After 54 years of enticing audiences into the stalls, the National Theatre’s posters are getting their own moment in the spotlight with an exhibition curated by Rick Poynor in the NT’s Wolfson gallery (4 Oct-31 March). National Theatre Posters raids the archives to tell a fascinating story about the theatre and its visual communications, which have been under the watchful eye of just five head designers. “In the 60s the designs are very clean and modernist,” says Poynor, professor of design and visual culture at the University of Reading. “By 2003, there’s an emerging sense of the theatre as a brand, and the poster imagery and typography having to reflect that.” As for what makes the perfect poster, “there is no formula” Poynor says, “but what you absolutely have to do is grab the viewer’s attention, magnetise the eye.”