Description
The poster - inexpensive, colorful, and immediate - was an ideal medium for delivering messages about Americans' duties on the home front during World War II.Design for Victory presents more than 150 of these stunning images - many never reproduced since their first issue - culled from the collections of the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.William L. Bird, Jr. and Harry R. Rubenstein delve beneath the surface of these colorful graphics, telling the stories behind their production and revealing how posters fulfilled the goals and needs of their creators. The authors describe the history of how specific posters were conceived and received, focusing on the workings of the wartime advertising profession and demonstrating how posters often reflected uneasy relations between labor and management.
Read More
Inciting Americans at home to do their part in producing for the war effort, the poster-inexpensive, accessible, and ever-present-was an ideal agent for making war aims the personal mission of every citizen. From 1941 to 1945, government agencies, businesses, and private organizations issued an array of poster images linking the military front with the home front, calling upon all Americans to boost production at work and at home. The U.S. Office of War Information created the "Poster Pledge," urging volunteers to "avoid poster waste," "treat posters as real war ammunition," and "never let a poster lie idle."This colorful collection of over 150 World War II-era posters focuses on the theme of wartime production on the home front. The range of designs and images will inspire graphic designers, while the descriptive captions and informative text will interest history and military buffs. Some of the famous slogans these posters introduced include "When you ride alone you ride with Hitler," "She won't talk-will you? The enemy has ears," "This is America...Keep it Free," and "Remember Pearl Harbor-purl harder!"
Read Less