I’ve been overtaken by events over the last few days, which has eaten into my thinking and posting time more than I would have liked. Fortunately, Sam Leith in today’s Guardian has been writing intelligently about posters, so that I don’t have to. His points about the decline of lithography and the absence of concept apply to more than just political posters.
He’s using the newly revamped and re-opened People’s History Museum in Manchester for the posters which prove his point. They do have an excellent digitised archive too, so you can wander through their collections and draw your own conclusions. The images, however, are still a bit ropey. Here’s one poster I liked, a touch green perhaps.
But the other Civil Defence one above actually comes from our own collection, as their image from the same series was more of a collection of pixels than anything else. But I’m sure that’s just teething problems.
(And yes, I know, our images aren’t that great either. We only took them as mug shots for our own reference, not having any idea that they might end up out there on the web. So apologies if a) they are less than orthogonal, and b) you see more of our floor that you might strictly wish to.)
Meanwhile, elsewhere on the web, you can buy this:
Possibly the only time you are going to see the words Harry Stevens and Art in the same sentence. There on the other hand, it is only £9.99 at the moment. On eBay of course.