"Keep Calm and Carry On": The Story of the Iconic World War II Poster | Hacker News Reader

"Keep Calm and Carry On": The Story of the Iconic World War II Poster

openculture.com

108 pointsgruseom28 comments

Very odd to see this here; my mother works in that bookshop. I remember her telling me how the phones were constantly ringing for the whole week after that first ad was put in the paper, with everybody wanting that damn poster and nobody interested in any books at all.

It's a great place as well, with all the old railway station trappings around (there's even more in the publicly inaccessible bits at the back) and worth a visit (modulo disclosure of personal interest etc).

As a side project for the office, I spent quite a bit of time making a letterpress inside-joke parody poster for the chartboost office:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150768369153169

I carved the negative for the crown and bottom decoration out of a block of linoleum [1] (~13h), gathered what little old wood type I could find to print up our ad targeting algorithm[2] (~6h), cut out masks for the punctuation because there's no wood type punctuation at that size and printed the whole thing in by sending each poster 6 times through the press for each part (~7h). It was a fun project.

Yes, I'm a nerd, and I get bored.

[1]: Here's what the carved block looks like: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150756454243169

[2]: Not really, we'd be a pretty poor ad network if that was it.

The video claims the poster was kept in reserve for "times of crisis or invasion"; I've also heard that they were specifically intended to be deployed if the Nazi invasion was successful, as a euphemism for "please submit to the Nazis for the moment, we'll negotiate with them on your behalf as soon as we're able" gesture.

Does anyone have any harder evidence either way?

No hard evidence, I remember reading about it when I moved to the UK.

To me it simply means: in times of stress/danger, don't panic, don't lose your focus. I find it very inspirational. There's almost always a solution to our problems, but it's harder to find if we're not in the right state of mind.

Being as how the poster was commissioned on the eve of WWII, that means before Churchill became PM, it is plausible, but if some bureaucrat was thinking that, he dare not speak it or leave any written record. That's a meme that will probably live on in urban myth.

The wikipedia Page (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keep_Calm_and_Carry_On) has some interesting links. I am amazed this is genuine - I had thought it was faux antique too. Sometimes things can be too good and true it seems

edit: Bit of a rewrite, added link

In August 2011, it was reported that a UK based company called "Keep Calm and Carry On Ltd" had registered the slogan as a community trade mark in the EU, after failing to trademark the slogan in the United Kingdom. They issued a take-down request against a seller of Keep Calm and Carry On products. ... The company is now trying to trademark globally in the United States and Canada.

What went through their heads? "Oh I've seen this cool poster in a couple of places, let's trademark it and make some money on something I haven't even created."

You now understand the current practice of intellectual property law.

I'm just going to take the opportunity to promote my social networking experiment, http://keepcalmand.com/

So far it's on track for exponential traffic growth, which is exciting. All traffic either comes from facebook sharing or google.

It looks good, but it would be much better if you used the right font for the text.

Yeh, when I've got the time I'll put a similar font on. It does have the correct font for the wallpapers though

Gill Sans was my guess, but looking at the R, I'm certainly wrong.

Thanks for that, I have a new wallpaper!

I just have a nitpick: I think it should break the two words into different lines, like the original does. I first thought it was because the word I chose was shorter (I used "WAVE ON", as in Hendrix's If 6 was 9), but it happens with "CARRY ON" too.

Yeh. I thought that too, but it needs some more general tinkering anyway. I'll get round to it at somepoint

on my screen the background color of the crown is a different red than the rest of the page

Hmm, I'll look into it

The lettering is what makes the original poster. The original poster was most probably hand lettered by a talented lettering artist. Arial doesn't come remotely close.

Especially the capital "r". Arial's "R" makes me want to turn away. "I'm a capital p, but have a protuberance!" Its leg is about as graceful as a heavy duty shoring rod that has been heaved to, propping up an obese person. "Spare me that next step!".

I'm probably reading too much into it, but to me, "Keep Calm and Carry On" resonates very well with entrepreneurial spirit. A great reminder that even in defeat there is no need for drama: keep calm, carry on (& create something new!)

Thanks. Since I first saw these posters I have been wondering whether they were faux-antiques.

Much parodied, indeed: http://www.allposters.com/gallery.asp?cat=141240&c=c&...

I always thought the slogan sounded faintly Orwellian.

The role of propaganda was something that Orwell was interested in:

"propaganda in some form or other lurks in every book, that every work of art has a meaning and a purpose — a political, social and religious purpose — that our aesthetic judgements are always coloured by our prejudices and beliefs"

http://orwell.ru/library/articles/frontiers/english/e_front

For some reason, this phrase grates on my nerves. Maybe it has Orwellian overtones that trigger something in my subconscious. I don't know what it is but this slogan makes me angry almost beyond rationality. Ironic.

P.S. Maybe its the fact that my boss has one of its parodies hanging in his office. :/

To me, it sounds awfully similar to "move along; nothing to see here."

Wow, I didn't realize this was just (re-)discovered in 2000. Another riff on the slogan: knitting store by my house has a little sign in the window that reads "Keep Calm and Carry Yarn"

As a personal note, I'm kind of getting sick of it. There is some variation of it in almost every store near me and it just grinds my gears to see it overused so much.

I could have sworn that I had read something about this poster just a few days/weeks ago.

That video (while great) is something right out of a Wes Anderson movie.

Not new, not original youtube or producer site. This really needed to be HN'd?

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