Type 02-20-12

This was bought at Barnes and Noble bookstores. It is  a remake of the famous WWII poster of  "keep clam and carry on." The poster was created to encourage the citizens of London to ignore the Nazi bombing of their city. The poster was a rallying cry for the English in their fight.

Today this slogan is reused in many different forms, like in this example, "Keep calm and eat cupcakes." The authoritative voice of the original poster translates well to these other versions by sprinkling it with humor. The sheer number of reproductions that are made now echo the difference in cultures.

Our culture is much more fractured than wartime England. England at that time had serious political problems and needed society to come together for the war effort. These modern versions poke fun at the original's serious tone by changing the subject matter by making everyday "luxuries" into serious matters.

This poster was originally produced byt he Ministry of Information. This ministry main objective was to produce propaganda material. "keep calm" posters aimed at reducing the fear the German bombing had on the civilian population by giving the people the impression that the government was calm and collected and that they will win the war.

Unfortunately, the original posters doesn't use a standard font because they were hand-designed and by a anonymous civil servant.This again reflects the state of the culture in war time England (http://www.keepcalm-o-matic.co.uk/guide_to_keep_calm/). According to discussions at typophile.com the closest modern typeface is Avenir.


Avenir was created by Adrain Frutiger un 1988 and was intended "to be a more organic, humanist interpretation of these highly geometric types" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avenir_(typeface)). Avenir was modeled from the early geometric sans-serif typefaces of Erbar and Futura. The "keep calm" poster typeface was certainly inspired by the same typefaces.


You can now generate these posters with a computer program now, http://www.keepcalm-o-matic.co.uk/. Here one can enter the desired content and generate it in this style. This is another way the "keep calm" posters have changed since their orignal conception. The government originally designed and published these as an important part of the war effort, now these are customized by anybody.