Conference Paper Accepted

On 10-11 September 2009, the ‘Group for War and Culture Studies‘, University of Westminster are holding a 2-day international conference “Men at War: Masculinities, Identities, Cultures”, at Swansea University (in association with Gender & Society and Conflict & Memory research groups). I submitted an abstract for a paper, which has now been accepted. The abstract , within the theme of ‘War Propaganda and Masculine Identities’, was as follows:s

“Men at Work: Visible and Invisible Men in Second World War Posters”

Dr Bex Lewis, Honorary Research Fellow/Associate Lecturer, University of Winchester

The Ministry of Information (MOI), officially formed at the outbreak of the Second World War, was the central governmental publicity machine. Its role was to tell the citizen ‘clearly and swiftly what he is to do, where he is to do it, how he is to do it and what he should not do’.

Considering posters produced by the MOI during the Second World War, this paper will identify masculine identities, both visible and invisible, defined as ‘normal’. These images were interpreted by artists, accepted by the government, and published in wartime posters aimed at the ‘civilian army’.

Image courtesy of Onslow’s Auctioneers.

Keep Calm and Fake a British Accent

For a better version of this poster, seen in a shop window in San Francisco yesterday, see this Flickr site.

The original slogan makes its appearance at a Canadian liberal convention (search or scroll down).

Not a huge amount of other activity going on, although it still makes its appearance in many personal blogs in many different guises:

• Keep on Writing
• Coping with children
• Keep on making things
• German blog (including the fairly common misunderstanding that this slogan was important at the time! No, I can’t speak German, but Google translate gives me a rough idea)

Ashley Havinden (b.1903; d.1973)

Ashley Eldrid Havinden, who signed his work ‘Ashley’, was born in Rochester, Kent on April 13 1903. He studied drawing and design in evening classes at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London, whilst also taking lessons from Henry Moore (the sculptor). He joined W.S. Crawford, Ltd., advertising agents, as a nineteen year old trainee in 1922. He was promoted to become Art Director and a Board Member in 1939. Crawford’s became a leading advertising agency in the 1920s and 1930s, with most of this success attributed to Ashley. Ashley worked with account executive Margaret Sangster (later his wife), and copywriter G.H. Saxon-Mills to produce many innovative advertising campaigns. Art and Industry noted that Ashley had ‘done more than any other artist to bring new visual conceptions to the layout of press advertisements’.

Ashley was influenced by cubism, futurism and Bauhaus typography, and ‘by the mid-1920s he was developing a new typographic language for his advertisements’, particularly in the 1925 campaign for Chrysler, which was so successful it inspired many imitations. Ashley produced many successful and influential campaigns in the 1930s, including those of the Milk Marketing Board, the GPO, Simpson’s department store and Eno’s Fruit Salts, and in 1933 began to design rugs and tapestries, some used by Simpson. Ashley joined the Forces in wartime, where his artistic skills were put to use in camouflage work. He also designed typographical posters for the ARP and GPO, which ‘broke new ground in the use of words and colour as vivid poster material without any help from pictures’. Ashley created two varieties of monotype typeface: the Ashley Crawford in 1930 and Ashley Script, a heavy brush script, in 1955. Ashley’s post-war work included producing advertising materials for Daks, Wolsey and Pretty Polly. In 1946 Ashley was appointed Director of Crawfords, in 1947 he was appointed RDI (and was master of the Faculty in 1967 and 1969), and in 1948 became Chairman of Sit William Crawford and Partners, Industrial Designers. In 1951 Ashley received an OBE for his services to graphic design, and was elected President of the Society of Industrial Artists (now the Chartered Society of Designers) in 1953, and President of the AGI between 1957 and 1960. Art and Industry again discussed his work in January 1957, particularly how he was influenced by, and a pioneer for, ‘the forward art movements of his time’.

• Exhibition, Edinburgh, 2004
• VADS: Display & National Identity
• See original posting