How to Make and Reproduce Posters
A short wartime pamphlet from the U.S. Office of War Information's Graphics Division that teaches teachers, students and local artists to make home-front posters with cheap materials.
What it is
A short wartime pamphlet from the U.S. Office of War Information's Graphics Division that teaches teachers, students and local artists to make home-front posters with cheap materials. The introduction builds a sample SHARE YOUR CAR poster on a 14 x 22 inch yellow card split into three zones: the command in the largest lettering, a snapshot of neighbours in one car cut out as a silhouette, and small type saying where to join a car pool. It prices every material, from photostats to gummed letters. Thomas M. Folds' chapter sorts war posters into three types (those that build a state of mind, those that ask for an action, and follow-up posters that explain how, when and where) and covers timing, placement and a single main idea. The rest teaches silk screen (Harry Sternberg), linoleum and wood block (Will Barnet) and cut-out stencil (Anthony Velonis).
Why read it now
The layout advice holds: one message, the action in the biggest type, the picture cut to its outline, and details kept small for people who have already stopped. Eye-tracking work on print ads (Pieters and Wedel, 2004) found that pictures catch the eye whatever their size while text catches it roughly in proportion to its size, which backs both the large command line and the call to cut words. The three-type split is a campaign sequence, not a style list: a mood poster moves nobody unless posters that ask and posters that instruct follow it. The placement rule is still exact: long copy only where people stand still, such as beside a till. What has dated is the production craft (silk screen frames, photostats, prices in cents) and the propaganda aims of the war years. To use it: before briefing any poster, billboard or story frame, write the three functions (the line, the picture, the when and where) on one card, and decide where the viewer will pause before allowing more than a few words.
Passages worth keeping
A poster is any kind of placard which gives information or tells people to do certain things. Anyone can make a poster. The simplest poster is always the most effective.
الملصق أي لوحة تعطي معلومة أو تطلب من الناس فعلًا، وكلما كان أبسط كان أقوى أثرًا.
Posters carrying more than a few words of information should only be displayed in places where people are likely to be close to them for a while, such as beside cash registers in markets.
الملصق كثير الكلام لا يصلح إلا في مكان يقف فيه الناس مدة، مثل جانب صندوق الدفع في السوق.
Many posters are ineffective because they are displayed at the wrong moment.
يفشل كثير من الملصقات لأنها تظهر في غير وقتها، فالتوقيت جزء من الرسالة نفسها.
To compel attention the poster must be simple, bold and forceful in pattern
حتى يلفت الملصق النظر وسط زحام الواجهات يجب أن يكون بسيطًا وجريئًا وقوي التكوين.
When both picture and lettering are organized into a compact pattern, the spectator will remember them as a single impression, just as he does the details of a simple trade-mark.
إذا اجتمعت الصورة والكتابة في تكوين واحد متماسك تذكرها المشاهد انطباعًا واحدًا، كما يتذكر شعارًا تجاريًا بسيطًا.
The scanned text has OCR errors. The passages are quoted from it, with only obvious slips fixed.
What it teaches best
Read the original archive.org
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