Posters

For my art group meeting tomorrow we have been studying Poster Art.  I have decided to concentrate on wartime recruitment posters .  The one above is the most well known one and certainly the most copied.  It first appeared as the cover illustration for the magazine London Opinion on 5 September 1914.  It depicts Lord Kitchener, then British Secretary of State for War.  This image was quickly reproduced in poster size and was seen everywhere appealing for recruits into the Army.

There were a lot of posters encouraging young women to join the Women's Land Army.

as well as the other services.

and, of course, women were needed to take men's places in the factories.

Of course these posters are produced and displayed to have instant impact and to get the message across to the viewer in as few words as possible and the one below certainly does that.

'We Can Do It' is not, in fact, a recruitment poster but an American propaganda poster produced in 1943 used as an inspirational image to boost worker morale and encourage existing workers to work harder!.  It was actually seen very little during the war but rediscovered in  the early 1980s and widely produced in many forms, particularly to promote feminism.  The poster certainly packs a punch, so to speak!