Category Archives: posters

Extended Christmas Greetings

By crownfolio | Published: December 22, 2011

More Christmas joy from the BPMA, which today comes to you in the form of lovely long van posters. This first offering, from Eric Fraser in 1942, may well not be a Christmas poster at all, but I liked the elephants so much that it can stay anyway. This Beaumont also has that wartime urgency [...]

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Guildford Calling

By crownfolio | Published: December 21, 2011

I’ve spent too much time standing in queues and having a nervous breakdown in toyshops recently to have kept a much of an eye on eBay.  Mostly that doesn’t matter, as it’s been winding down for Christmas.  But I did miss out on mentioning one interesting set of posters. As you can see, I’m using [...]

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Lines of disappearance

By crownfolio | Published: September 9, 2011

As I mentioned then, the Graphis article I posted about a couple of days ago has raised a few questions. The easy one – in the sense that it is factual rather than philosophical – is about this wonderful set of GPO posters, Lines of Communication.  Four are illustrated in Graphis, of which I can find three in [...]

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What is the range of activity of the commercial artist in Britain?

By crownfolio | Published: September 7, 2011

That’s what this copy of Graphis is asking in 1950. (And yes, the cover is by Tom Eckersley). Unfortunately for us, most of the answers are in black and white, apart from this design for Kia-ora by Lewitt-Him. And this Christmas advertisement for Simpsons of Piccadilly. I think there may have been some more at [...]

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Advanced or gimmicky?

By crownfolio | Published: July 27, 2011

It’s a bit unfair to apply too much hindsight to other people’s critical judgements.  Classics are sometimes not spotted as such at the time, while designs that are feted often don’t stand the test of time. But in the case of posters, it’s so rare to get any kind of contemporary reaction to them that [...]

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Don’t mention (all of) the war

By crownfolio | Published: July 20, 2011

Back in my student days, now rather some time ago, I was sent to chaperone some Belgian friends of the family when they made a short visit to London, to assist with the language and the mysteries of the London Underground. There are three things that I remember clearly from this trip: a meal out [...]

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