Posters and Propaganda In Wartime

“This is a great primary source book for teenagers and adults alike. It collects the most iconic wartime posters of the 20th century showing the British government’s changing priorities during each of the World Wars. It is beautifully produced in hard back and the poster images are so memorable that they make a great way of learning what was going on in each war. The book is spiced up with funny and moving quotations from people who lived during the war and survived it, which really help to bring the wartime experience to life.”

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F.G.A. Scott

Scott was a member of the Public Relations Staff and a former member of the GPO Savings Bank publicity staff. He designed ‘step on it’, the first time that a design by staff had been used. He was the Hon. Secretary and Treasurer of the British Typographer’s Guild. He designed the copy, layout and colour designs for ‘Snap Into It’.

Information collated from: Anonymous, ‘War Office Launch Advg. Campaign to Raise 100,000 Men’, Advertiser’s Weekly, Vol. 108, No. 1,404, April 18 1940, p.71; Anonymous, Image and caption, Advertiser’s Weekly, Vol. 109, No. 1,423, August 29 1940, p.127

Hans Schleger (Zéró) (b.1898; d.1976)

Hans Schleger was born in Kempen, Germany. He trained at the National School of Applied Art, Berlin (Kuntstgewerbeschule) between 1918 and 1921, at a time when the Bauhaus was making an impact. Between 1921 and 1924 Schleger was a publicity and film set designer for Karl Hagenbeck, also in Berlin. In 1924 he moved to New York for five years, where he ‘contributed to the development of modern American advertising design’, first as a freelance designer, then a year as art director of an advertising agency. He was an early contributor to the New Yorker and taught for a while as visiting Associate Professor at the Institute of Design, Chicago, Illinois. It was during this period that he adopted that pseudonym Zéró, having established his own Madison Avenue Studio in 1926.

In 1929 Schleger returned to Berlin, working the German office of W.S. Crawford’s advertising agency. In 1932 he settled permanently in England, becoming naturalised in 1938. Opening his own studio, he was ‘mainly concerned with the establishment of an organic design and advertising policy for British industrial concerns, including the British Sugar Corporation, Fisons, MacFisheries, Finmar, the John Lewis Partnership and others’. A close friend of Kauffer, E. McKnight, Schleger also helped familiarise the public with modernistic graphic design. He was an early proponent of the concept of ‘corporate identity’, refining the famous London Transport ‘Circle-and-bar’ symbol for use as the bus stop symbol.

A member of the AGI, Schleger’s inter-war work had included the design of many posters, and his work, particularly from the Second World War, ‘was distinguished by wit and innovative techniques like photomontage’. During the Second World War Schleger designed many posters for London Transport, the Ministry of Food and the GPO. Schleger believed that his work not only required a professional approach, but had ‘international and social influence’. He did not accept the limitations of wartime shortages and insisted on the highest standards. In 1946 Schleger designed and contributed to the influential text The Practice of Design. Art and Industry described the work of Schleger in May 1948, with his use of modern poster design. During the 1950s and 1960s, along with Henrion, F.H.K., Schleger pioneered corporate identity in Britain, both through collaboration with Mather and Crowther (advertising agency) and through Hans Schleger and Associates, founded in 1953. In 1959 he was appointed Royal Designer for Industry.

Major commissions by Schleger included the symbols for the Design Centre in Haymarket, London (1955), and the Edinburgh International Festival, designed 1966 (replaced 1978). Schleger lectured and exhibited widely, acting as a visiting lecturer to the Chelsea Polytechnic, the Central School of Arts and Crafts, the Royal College of Art, all in London, and the Regional College of Art, Manchester. He was visiting associate professor to the Institute of Design in Chicago for a year. One-man exhibitions of his work were held in London, New York and Chicago, plus he participated in many European exhibitions, and one in Tokyo. Papers covering Hans Schleger’s work as a corporate, exhibition and graphic designer from c.1950-1978 are held at the National Art Library.

Information taken from: Livingston, A. and Livingston, I., Dictionary of Graphic Design and Designers, 1992, p.175, Darracott, J. and Loftus, B., Second World War Posters, 1981 (1972), p.59, London Transport Museum Database, February 2000, quoting Green 1990, Gowing, M., ‘The Creative Mind in Advertising: Ruth Gill’, Art and Industry, Vol. 63, No. 375, September 1957, p.88, Gowing, M., ‘Zero: Hans Schleger’, Art and Industry, Vol. 44, No. 263, May 1948, pp.162-167, Amstutz, W., Who’s Who in Graphic Art, 1962, p.264, National Art Library, ‘AAD Holdings’, http://www.nal.vam.ac.uk/aad/aadalpha.html, accessed August 28 2003

Related Texts

• Paul Rand (Foreword), Pat Schleger, Fiona MacCarthy (Introduction) Zero: Hans Schleger-A Life of Design 2001 Publisher Info

Gilbert Rumbold

Illustrated the quintessential Savoy Cocktail Book in the early 1930s in a ‘lively and colourful’ Art Deco style. ‘Gilbert Rumbold was living in Broadstairs in the fifties when I was a school friend of his son. He was a well known character, often to be seen wandering around with his painting equipment tucked under his one arm. He had lost an arm in a train accident but I don’t know when that was. His wife was also living in the town with their two children, but she and Gilbert had split up. I believe his wife’s name was Mary. Gilbert spent most of his time inhabiting the various pubs in Broadstairs and earned some money making drawings of local scenes, to be sold in the various gift shops in the town. I would sometimes go with his son to meet Gilbert in a pub, as he was not welcome at home. Sometime around the early seventies he was resident in a geriatric hospital and died there. I think it was called Hill House Hospital, near Minster in Thanet, Kent.’

Illustrated is one of Gilbert Rumbold’s paintings, of Joan Temple’s dog ‘Pammy’, who accompanied Jon Temple’s grandad everywhere. Jon Temple notes that his grandad was good friends with Gilbert Rumbold, and that they used to drink in the Crown Pub at the bottom of Broadstairs High Street. Rumbold loved the dog so much he did this picture of her in charcoal and watercolour.

Information collated from: Emails from Peter Spenceley, 03 November 2002, Jon Temple, June 2005, and http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=cache:AfXu1aexRYJ:www.ilabdatabase.com/php/search.php3%3FAll%3Dfine%2Bart%2Bbooks+%22Gilbert+Rumbold%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8, accessed October 04 2003

Books

• Rumbold, G., The Wayside Book, 1934. This has been described as “an eccentric and charming illustrated description of a number of routes for motoring (definitely motoring in 1934) and more particularly details of every pub and hotel on the way.”

Harry Rowntree (b.1878; d.1950)

In 1914, Harry Rowntree, a New Zealander, became president of the London Sketch Club. He was ‘destined to become one of Britain’s finest children’s illustrators’, and it ‘has been said that it was his quirky little figures that set a style that can be seen in present day comics’. Other work that Rowntree designed included illustrated postcards, published from 1903-1917, eight full-colour plates for The King of the Golden River and other Stories, 1907, and playing cards depicting birds, for Waddingtons, in 1930.

Information collated from: London Sketch Club, ‘Brief History’, http://www.londonsketchclub.com/history3.html, accessed October 4 2003; Cooper, T., ‘List of Children’s Artists Born & Died Dates & Years they Published Postcards’, http://www.deltatango.freeserve.co.uk/childrensartist.html, accessed October 4 2003; Used Book Central, ‘Author: Ruskin, John’, http://www.usedbookcentral.com/texis/ubc/searchbooks,author,Ruskin_John,jump,160.html, accessed October 4 2003; Collectors Playing Cards, ‘Playing cards. Named backs, Artist signed and Picture backs’, http://www.collectorsplayingcards.co.uk/cardsale_namedpic.htm, accessed October 4 2003

Wyndham Robinson

Wyndham Robinson was the cartoonist of the Morning Post, which was absorbed into The Daily Telegraph in 1936. The Labour Politician Herbert Morrison, whilst searching for Robinsons’s original artwork, noted that Robinson’s cartoons always ‘reflected the political stance of the newspaper itself. “He said in pictures what the leader writers said on the editorial page”‘, not something that always happened. His images utilised little visual background (unlike others, such as David Low who liked to set his participants in rooms. He appeared to be anti-Fascist and anti-Communist. He designed posters to advertise travel in Rhodesia in the late 1920s.

Information collated from: Brighton School of Art and Design, ‘Satire’, http://www.adh.brighton.ac.uk/schoolofdesign/MA.COURSE/09/Lsatire01.html, accessed October 4 2003; Rare-posters.com, ‘Rare Posters’, http://www.rare-posters.com/729.html, accessed October 4 2003.

Bruce Roberts

In the 1950s, Bruce Roberts was represented by Artist Partners, Ltd.

Information collated from: Artist Partners, ‘ap retro’, http://www.artistpartners.com/mainpages/ap_retro.html, accessed August 28 2003.

Seduction or Instruction?: First World War Posters in Britain and Europe

Jim Aulich & John Hewitt (2007)

“This book makes a critical and historical analysis of the public information poster and its graphic derivatives in Britain and Europe during the First World War. Governments need public support in time of war. The First World War was the first international conflict to see the launch of major publicity campaigns designed to maintain public support for national needs and government policies. What we now know as spin has its origins in the phenomenon. Then, as now, the press, photography and film played an important role, but in the early 20th century there was no radio, television or internet and the most publicly visible advertising medium was the poster. Considering the museological and memorialising imperatives behind the formation of the war publicity collection at the Imperial War Museum, this fascinating book goes on to provide a constitutional and iconographical analyses of the British Government recruiting, War Loan and charity campaigns; the effect of the inroads of the poster into important public and symbolic spaces; a comparative analysis of European poster design and the visual contribution of the poster through style and iconography to languages of ‘imagined communities’ and the construction of the individual subject. The book will of interest to design historians, historians and readers involved with the study of communication arts, publicity, advertising and visual culture at every level.”

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Harold A. Pym

Harold A. Pym was born in England where he studied fine art in London under members of the RA. During the 1930s Pym’s design covered everything from portraits to illustrations for London weekly and daily newspapers, and commissions from major companies, such as the Ford Motor Company, to portray their products. During the Second World War Pym produced ‘now famous morale-boosting posters’ for the MOI, and emigrated shortly afterwards to Vancouver, Canada.

In 1970, Harold was commissioned by the British Columbia Government to go to Osake, Japan and create art for their Pavilion at the World’s Fair. Whilst living in Vancouver, Harold’s work included murals and guest room pictures for major hotel chains such as Hyatt Regency, Four Seasons and Canadian Pacific. Throughout his life, Harold studied the major religions, ‘New Thought’ movements and mystery school teachings, looking for the major inter-connectedness between art, science and religion.

Information collated from: Rockies.net, ‘Harold Pym’, http://www.rockies.net/~julian/pymb.htm, accessed October 4 2003.

Tom Purvis (b.1888; d.1957/9)

Tom Purvis was born in June 12 1888, the son of a sailor turned marine painter (marine artist TG Purvis (1861-1933)). Purvis studied at Camberwell School of Art, and with Sickert and Degas. He then spent six years working as a designer for the advertising agency, Mather and Crowther, before establishing a freelance practice, whilst studying lithography at the Avenue Press. In 1907 he designed his first independent posters, for Dewar’s Whisky. Other major commissions followed, including many well-known works for LNER. During the 1914-18 war Purvis served with, and became a captain of, the Artist Rifles in France, until he was wounded. In the 1930s Purvis was a very successful poster designer, charging up to £250 for a design. Influenced by the Beggarstaff Brothers and German designers such as Hohlwëin, Purvis’s style was varied, ranging from flat areas of colour for LNER, to ‘massive representations of the human form and forceful lettering in his posters for Austin Reed and the British Industries Fair’. Purvis ‘moved British poster design away from its reliance on traditional imagery to a symbolism influenced by European designers’ such as Hohlwëin. Purvis was involved in the design of the ‘Purma’ camera in the 1930s.

In 1935 Purvis served on the Committee for the British Art in Industry Exhibition, and in 1936 was made one of the first eleven Royal Designer’s for Industry, becoming master of the RDI Faculty in 1940. In October 1939, Advertising World presented a summary of Purvis’s thoughts on poster design, taken from Poster Progress, a five-year survey of world-wide poster design, to which he wrote the introduction. In 1940, Purvis designed ‘Lend to Defend His Right to be Free’, for the National Savings Committee, using his son Roger as the design, as he never did preliminary sketches. Purvis worked as a war artist for the Ministry of Supply, based in London, from 1940 to 1945. In 1941 he assured readers of Advertiser’s Weekly that he had not abandoned poster design whilst ‘painting for posterity’ in factories in Scotland, but was working on a poster for the Air Ministry. Purvis was also a book illustrator, including Bomber’s Moon by Negley Farson (1941). Post-war he gave up poster designing to paint portraits, and in the last years of his life, religious pictures. He died on August 27 1957/9.

Information taken from: Darracott, J. and Loftus, B., Second World War Posters, 1981 (1972), p.50, London Transport Museum Database, February 2000, taken from Green, 1990, Livingston, A. and Livingston, I., Dictionary of Graphic Design and Designers, 1992, p.161, Outdoor, ‘Plain Speaking to Poster Buyers – By Tom Purvis; in New Book’, Advertising World, October 1939, pp.23-24, Anonymous, ‘Tom Purvis is Painting in Scotland’, Advertiser’s Weekly, July 17 1941, p.58; Email from Prof Denis Mollison, May 2005

Related Links:

• Rennie, P., ‘Tom Purvis’, http://www.rennart.co.uk/purvis.html, accessed April 30 2004