By Hunter Oatman-Stanford — Looking at the bold, abstract forms on anti-syphilis posters from the late 1930s, confusion is to be expected: What exactly is this disease? And how do I catch it? Heading into World War II, America’s young military recruits weren’t very clear on the details either. In order to prevent a repeat of the venereal disease (VD) epidemic of World War I, the U.S. government teamed up with artists, designers, and ad-men to set the story straight, plastering public-health warnings on walls at bases...

How We Used to Give Thanks in Wartime

By Ben Marks — Earlier this month, while browsing the Library of Congress website for Armistice Day images, we came across this provocatively titled 1918 lithograph, created by an artist named A. Hendee and printed by Edwards & Deutsch of Chicago for the United States Food Administration. That agency was established in August of 1917 by the Food and Fuel Control Act, which was designed to, among other things, keep grain prices low so food would be more economical to distribute to the Allies in Europe. The...

Women and Children: The Secret Weapons of World War I Propaganda Posters

By Ben Marks — Armistice Day is a time to reflect upon that defining moment at the end of World War I, at 11 a.m. on November 11, 1918, when soldiers stopped shooting at each other along Europe's Western Front. At its close, most observers assumed that nothing would ever match the "Great War" for its sheer volumes of death and destruction, and for decades after, people around the world stopped whatever they were doing at that hour to observe two minutes of silence in a mute echo of the quiet that must have...

David Lance Goines Discusses Perfect Poster Design

By Maribeth Keane — I don’t collect posters. I don’t collect anything. I started making posters one at a time by hand in high school just for specific events, basically got going when I was a freshman. I still make them today, but they’re printed on a printing press now. I’ve made 221 posters, not including the ones I did in high school. Fundamentally, I believe that in order to be effective as opposed to artsy and not really effective at all, a poster has to be extremely simple. The Shepard Fairey posters...