Comenius Project-Street Art: Propaganda Posters- Keep Calm and Carry On

In late 1939 after the outbreak of the Second World War, the Ministry of Information was appointed by the British Government to design a number of morale boosting posters that would be displayed across the British Isles during the testing times that lay ahead.

With a bold coloured background, the posters were required to be similar in style and feature the symbolic crown of King George VI along with a simple yet effective font. The first two posters, ‘Your Courage, Your Cheerfulness, Your Resolution will Bring Us Victory’ and ‘Freedom is in Peril’ were produced by His Majesty’s Stationery Office (HMSO).

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These two were posted on public transport, in shop windows, upon notice boards and hoardings across Britian.

The third and final poster of the set was again very straightforward and to the point - it simply read ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’. The plan in place for this poster was to issue it only upon the invasion of Britain by Germany.

As this never happened, the poster was never officially seen by the public.

In 2000, a copy of the "Keep Calm and Carry On" poster was rediscovered in Barter Books, a second-hand bookshop in Alnwick, Northumberland. Since Crown Copyright expires on artistic works created by the UK government after 50 years, the image is now in the public domain. The poster's popularity has been attributed to a "nostalgia for a certain British character, an outlook" according to the Bagehot column in The Economist, that it "taps directly into the country's mythic image of itself: unshowily brave and just a little stiff, brewing tea as the bombs fall."

I personally like the poster because it is funny in a way that it fails to serve its purpose. It simply lacks the quality to boost the morale of the public. One certainly cannot expect people to actually "keep calm and carry on" when there's a bloody war going on!