John S Smith

Smith was active in the 1940s and 1950s, and exhibited at the RSMA.

Information collated from: Luxury Liners of the Past, ‘Postcard Artists’, http://www.geocites.com/luxury_liners/Artists.html, accessed October 3 2003.

Keep Calm and Carry Yarn

We clearly have David Simpkin on the look out for images of subversion now (nothing new there then), so here’s another gem he’s found from “The Daily What“

Mock the Week: Mocks David Cameron Poster

If you get a chance (probably available in the UK til Wednesday), check out Mock the Week for last week – excellent humour re: David Cameron’s new poster campaign – they got about 6 minutes of mileage out of it. The real poster is visible on 760 billboards across the UK… this was Dara’s interpretation of what the poster should have said… Very scathing that it’s all personality, no policies… hmmm, a certain Conservative MP made the same error post-war (Winston Churchill’s 1945 campaign was all about personality, Labour was all about policy!)

David Cameron: Airbrushed

David Cameron’s airbrushed poster campaign has backfired – setting off an internet craze of hilarious spoof versions.

On the mydavidcameron.com site jokers can adapt the “we can’t go on like this” adverts to poke fun at the 15ft-high picture of the Tory leader.

One shows his smoothed-over face with the words: “We can’t go on like this. I’ll cut my taxes, but not yours.”

Another replaces the picture with Harry Enfield’s “Tim Nice But Dim” saying: “My chums from school and I are going to absolutely, thoroughly, bloody-well sort the country out.” The airbrushed Mr Cameron is also portrayed as saying: “I love the BBC so much, I want to cut it up into little pieces and give it to all my friends.”

The spoof posters website, unfunded and not linked to a political party, was set up by designer Clifford Singer, who said. “We’ve been inundated.”

The site had 35,000 visits in the first week and received 200 poster ideas.

Meanwhile, a focus group report on the campaign poster said: “The general message was that it had backfired as it fed into the concerns people have about David Cameron and the Tories – that something doesn’t quite add up.”

The airbrushing was seen as “sly, cunning and slick” and Cameron as a “narcissist”. A Labour source said: “It has massively backfired. The outbreak of online mock-ups confirms this.”

Read full story and see my earlier entry.

[So Labour is not going to have similar problems with any of their posters, right?]

Keep Calm and Carry On Update

So, what’s been going on in the world of Keep Calm and Carry On, whilst we’ve been enjoying the halcyon days of British summer (and with all those tales of the recession coming to an end, has the popularity of the slogan taken a downturn?)

• Troops On Tour order the t-shirts
• A casting call for a production entitled “Keep Calm and Carry On” (deadline 28th September)
• Keep Calm and Sew Stuff (machine design) (made same mistake as me!)
• Vera Lynn quotes the poster, as her album hits No.1, decades after she recorded it.
• Card-carrying University of Illinois President B. Joseph White
• Motivational Slogans/World-War-II, hand-in-hand
• Lord Paul Myners (City Minister)
• In diamante!
• Necklaces
• Wayne Rooney listening to the Stereophonics “Keep Calm and Carry On” album (loves it, apparently)
• A reader comments that this converted church is like Barter Books…
• Stereophonics : Live (Listen to a track from their album)
• Keep Calm and Carry On Collecting (Nazi Relics)
• Keep Calm and Smell the Roses
• Keep Calm and Carry On Craze
• San Franciscans love it?
• Still saving from ‘freak out’ in the recession, but apparently also available as a pepper spray!
• Critique of the “police poster” series.
• Clutch Bag
• For Reading F.C.
• Derren Brown “remain calm”, made others think of KCCO!
• Effortless Anthropologie remembers it as a 2007 design issue…
• 1940s weekend, Norfolk
• Submitted to the “Snowclone” database (What’s a snowclone?)
• Remember the slogan when reading health articles!
• Advising expats from the US, living in the UK
• Graffitied onto a train
• An insult to those with depression
• ‘Making art and ignoring the dishes‘ (what a great slogan in its own right!)

Super Fun Days Out: Love Life… Live It!

Recently, I have been appointed as a partner, and the New Media Strategist for Super Fun Days Out, covering the blog (coming shortly), Twitter, and Bookmarking, starting with Delicious.

Super Fun Days Out is a free online adrenaline-directory, covering more than 2,000 UK companies who provide adventure sports. Rather than taking commission, SFDO (#sfdo) provides links directly to the sports providers, thus making it more affordable for those who want to participate in adventure sports, and giving the UK economy a boost as we continue to “Keep Calm and Carry On”, for which we have substituted our company slogan: “Love Life… Live It”!

Adventure Sports Include:4×4 driving; abseiling; airsoft; archery; assault course; banana rides; blading; body boarding; buggies; bungee jumping; bush craft; canoeing; canyoning; caving; clay pigeon shooting; coasteering; cycling; dinghy; dragon boating; duckies; fishing; flying; golf; hang gliding; helicopter; hill climbing; horse riding; hot air balloon; hovercrafting; ice skating; jcb driving; jet ski; karting; kayaking; kite surfing; land yachting; laser clay pigeon shooting; laser combat; laser tag; military driving; minimoto; mircolight; motocross; mountain biking; mountain boarding; outdoor pursuits; paddlesurfing; paintball; parachute; paragliding; paramotoring; performance car driving; powerboating; quad biking; raft building; rafting;rally driving; ringos; river bugs; rock climbing; rowing; sailing; scuba diving; segway racing; shark diving; shooting; skiing; skim boarding; skirmish; skydiving; skydiving freefall simulator; sleddog; sledging; snorkelling; snow; snowboarding; sphereing; surfing; wakeboarding; wakeskating; water sports; waterskiing; waveski; white water rafting; windsurfing; yachting; zip wire; zorbing

• Follow Super Fun Days Out on Twitter.
• Watch as we start to build links on Delicious
• Look out for the blog which will be linked [here], when you’ll find out more about our team, and the sports we love to get involved in!
• Join our Facebook group!
• Read the Daily Echo article.

Image generated by Keep-Calm-O-Matic.

Now Panic and Freak Out and other variations

Now, everyone knows about the alternate slogan “Now Panic and Freak Out”, but I don’t think I’ve ever put an image of it up here, this one is taken from Threadless.

I have always loved finding subverted images of the posters that I studied:

• The further that you go into Google Images, the more variations that you find!
• Flickr has a number of “Design Variations“
• “Keep Calm and Have a Cupcake” was also featured in the New York Times
• “Keep Calm and Spray On” perfume!
• Keep Calm and Carry On (with mice)
• Keep Calm and McLaren On
• Keep Calm and Customise
• Deviant Art
• Detroit Variation
• 12 months of ideas on a calendar
• DoobyBrain: Change Words and Be Hilarious
• Make your own!

Other Entries

• What Quebec Wants
• Dr Bex Lewis in the New York Times (now this is the closest I’ve come to seeing the print item – so far!)
• A blog entry by Crossed Wires.
• Whirled Peas: KCCO
• Choose a Shoe (but it’s not an RAF poster, it’s the Ministry of Information!)
• Cian Ó Laoghaire
• Leave Duff and Carry On (The Simpsons-esque)
• Slogan for a Parenting Blog!
• So many variations in colour too. I have the red one from Barter Books, but I have to say I love purple nearly as much, it’s tempting!

Who likes it/mentions it (according to Google Alerts!)?
I’m just fascinated to see how it’s been repurposed!

• Lose That Girl
• Leah from London
• Breizh from Morgantown, USA
• See in Technicolour
• Daisy-Chain
• PlusNet Community
• Meet the Hazards
• Music, Track No 6 on their MySpace (not sure it’s my taste, but interesting none-the-less)
• Interior Designer (anti-the-”fad”)
• Should the Swedes take on the phrase?
• Splendicity
• Give Away Today
• Silvio Berlusconi?
• Parasol Party
• Rob Cherry, seen in a Beach Hut
• What(Ever) [highlighted some rude ones, just to warn you!]
• Pedlars
• Lexie (mind the music!)
• BCreativeNot Crazy
• Jamie
• Helen Morgan

I have, like, over 100 Google Alerts come in – stopped at around 40ish, have other work to do today, but there’s so much information on this – SO interesting!

Keep Calm and McLaren On

My friend Emma went to Silverstone this weekend, and took this picture especially for me! Wonder if this guy had it custom made, of if there’s more of “Keep Calm and McLaren On” around! McLaren, of course, have 2008 F1 champion Lewis Hamilton driving for them, who’s not doing quite so well as fellow Brit Jenson Button is in driving for Brawn, although I believe they’re sorting issues with the car and improving! I used to follow F1 passionately, but found I didn’t really have time for it, and follow from a distance!

Carl Morris’s Blog: Check it Out

Not got long today, but yesterday I referred to Carl Morris’s blog on the new Police posters. Checking out some of his other links (the interests he has I particularly note are art and language), there’s also this fascinating entry: Why do we have Anti-Terrorist Hotline in Cardiff? (More poster madness.), which also links to subverted versions of the posters. Must see if I can dig out some of the material I picked up whilst researching my PhD on subverted and graffitied posters… it’s a great form of protest!