Category: Information

IT’S AN EMERGENCY….
POSTERS AND SLOGANS AT THE READY!

There’s nothing like an emergency to create a new raft of creative public service slogans and posters. Perhaps the most famous are those from the two World Wars. From the notorious WWI recruitment poster ‘Your County Needs You’ to the clever and guilt tripping ‘Daddy, what did you do in the Great War?’ slogans and images have been familiar parts of wartime imagery in the UK. WWII brought us ‘Dig for Victory’ and ‘Careless Talk Costs Lives’.

In more recent times, governments across the globe have had to get creative, to warn, educate and ‘encourage us’ to get up to speed with coronavirus and obey the rules. ‘Stay Home, Protect the NHS, Save Lives’ has given way in England to ‘Stay Alert, Control the Virus, Save Lives.’ A London-based creative team, James Hodson and Jason Keet, recently revived some of the UK’s most famous and catchy World War 1 and World War 2 slogans, to help in the new global battle against the spread of Covid-19. Instead of taking up arms, the country now requires us to ‘Sit on the Sofa’ and ‘Click For Victory’ by shopping online.

Australia has a well-deserved reputation for pulling no punches with public service posters etc. Their ‘If you drink and drive you’re a bloody idiot’ sums up the clarity usually adopted. Covid 19? No worries! Crocodile Dundee and kangaroos to the rescue. Swapping his trademark hunting knife for a butter knife, Dundee is pictured in a safety vest with the label: ‘Protecting Australia’s citizens from themselves.’ The posters below suggest correct social distancing need not be a problem. Every Aussie must know exactly what to do when they exercise with their kangaroos and koalas!

Twenty years ago, Stuart Manley found a dusty copy of the Second World War poster ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ in his second hand book shop in Alnwick, Northumberland. It was originally designed in the summer of 1939, by the shadow Ministry of Information. The choice of Red and White, copied from Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’, was chosen in the belief that the combination would produce a strong psychological reaction from the public. Although 2.5 million were produced, the surprising thing is that it was never actually issued. Officials feared that ‘it may annoy people that we should seem to doubt the steadiness of their nerves.’ The keep calm message didn’t seem totally relevant during the months of ‘phoney war’ which followed the declaration of hostilities in September 1939. By the time the Nazi Blitzkrieg began in Western Europe in the spring of 1940, a newly appointed director of Home Publicity decided to scrap ‘Keep Calm and Carry On.’ Stocks were pulped to help overcome a serious paper shortage. In spite of this, the poster and its many modern derivatives, has become one of the most recognisable in British history. Today we are advised to ‘Keep Calm and Wash Your Hands.’ We might as well add ‘Keep Calm and Sort out the Loft’ and of course, ‘Keep Calm and Wave to Friends and Neighbours As You Walk Around the Village!’