Last year saw the Quad Royal Advent Calendar, a festive poster for each of the 24 days. Unsurprisingly, most of the posters came from the GPO, the institution most keen that you should get your act together before Christmas. So keen, in fact, that not even an entire advent calendar could do justice to the quantity and quality they produced.
So, every so often before Christmas, I am going to have a festive wallow in the BPMA archive: because it’s Christmas, because I can, and because there are so many wonderful posters to be seen.
Today’s set come from Barnett Freedman, who was improvising around a theme in 1937 and 1938.
I particularly like the peremptoriness of this pair, but they are all beautiful.
Although Barnett Freedman was definitely a poster designer (producing well over 30 for London Transport alone), I never really think of him as one. I think that’s probably because the detail of his typography and design is always worthy of a closer look rather than the quick glance a big poster might only get.
But that’s why these four work so well. They’re little Crown Folios, designed for display at the counter, so people would have had plenty of time to look at them as they queued for their stamps. I did that last week; there wasn’t a single thing as nice as these anywhere to be seen.