What WWI Posters Say About Early 20th Century War Marketing

Side by side posters of James Montgomery Flagg's poster "I Want You For U.S. Army" (left) and Alfred Leete's "Britons, Lord Kitchener Wants You To Join Your Country's Army. God Save The King" (right)

This year marks the 100 anniversary of the start of World War I.  A good way of judging a society is the way it communicated it values and instincts during a particular time.  Long before modern communication tools like the Internet and television, graphic designers were given the important task of creating propaganda posters to inspire nations and boost morale during the Great War with aesthetically pleasing imagery.

Just like terrorists, the military needs to have a marketing department too.

On 13 April 1917 – seven days after the United States declared war on Germany – President Woodrow Wilson established the Committee on Public Information.  In order to reach out to Americans who didn’t read newspapers, go to the movie theater or attend community meetings, the Division of Pictorial Publicity was created to design visual communications.  This comprised of a group of artists and designers who would meet once a week in New York City to discuss poster requests from the government.

The most well known poster from that period was James Montgomery Flagg’s Uncle Sam “We Want You For U.S. Army” (Above).  Few people know that Flagg’s poster is actually an imitation of British graphic artist Alfred Leete’s “Britons, Lord Kitchener Wants You” poster.

Developed by the Office of Public Sector Information (or His Majesty’s Stationery Office at the time), British poster designers had a way of using images and words to bring the message home, inciting a sense of guilt for not doing your part in the war effort, as evidence in the next two posters.

Side by side posters of "Daddy, what did you do during the Great War?" and "It is far better to face the bullets than to be killed at home by a bomb"

Flagg also designed posters that appealed to America’s worst fear of the war coming stateside, like these poster of Columbia (a personification of America) sleeping while flames are raging behind her and encouraging recruitment.

Side by side posters of "Wake Up America" and "Columbia Calls"

Posters encouraged everyone to fulfil their duty in the Great War, and not just men fighting on the battlefield, but also women. Before the war, most women were housewives. But as men departed to fight on the Front, some women went with them as military nurses. In the United States, women also started doing the jobs men would do, such as machine operators and railroad conductors. There was also a greater demand in the U.S. government for more stenographers, typists and clerks.

While women were doing the work of men, this didn’t mean they received the same rights. Some employers were hostile to women working and didn’t pay them a fair wage or allowed them to unionize. Many employers didn’t provide childcare or even proper bathrooms for women. However, World War I was a major turning point for women, as this was the first time women showed that they could be more than just housewives and, thus, kickstarting the modern women’s rights movement.

Side by side posters of "Do the job he left behind" and "For every fighter a woman worker"

The Committee on Public Information also put out posters encouraging recruitment from African-Americans. Approximately 400,000 African-Americans served in the war, and about 42,000 actually saw action in the European theatre. The posters evoked a sense of heroism, self sacrifice and even the memory of Abraham Lincoln to frame the war effort as a struggle for freedom. Nonetheless, U.S. military units were still heavily segregated and black men still faced the same level of discrimination when they came home after the war.

Side by side WW1 posters of African American soliders

These are some other great posters from the time, encouraging some kind of involvement, whether it was telling men who weren’t enlisted that their labor was just as important, rationing or buying war bonds. World War I propaganda will go down in history as one of the most influential war marketing campaigns.

Posters of "Food Don't Waste It" and "Together We Can"

Posters saying "Little Americans Do Your Part" and "Come On Join Now"

Posters of "Help Them" and "Books Wanted"

Posters of "The Greatest Mother" and "Rivets are Bayonets"
 

Check out more World War I propaganda posters here.

Atheist Questions Faith In The African American Community

Contradiction - A Question of FaithI had the opportunity to view an interesting film recently called Contradiction: A Question of Faith.  This documentary delves into the role religion has played (or not played) in the African American community.  African-Americans are deeply religious, and a church can be found on every corner in many black neighborhoods.

But according to the film’s director, Jeremiah Camara, despite the large church attendance and the approximately $250 million weekly tithings, African-Americans have very little to show for being faithful.  Why are there still so many social and economic problems within the black community?  Isn’t God listening to their prayers?

“Religion flies through the airwaves, 24/7. Never is the dissenting voice heard. It’s time to hijack the mic,” said Camara.

Whether you are a devout Christian (or Muslim or Jew etc.) or a staunch atheist, Camara is right that there isn’t much discussion in American media about being a non-believer.  According to the Pew Center, the rate of people not affiliated with any religious denomination has increased in America. In the last five years alone, the percentage of religiously unaffiliated Americans has grown from 15 percent to 20 percent.  Many unaffiliated Americans are still religious or spiritual in the broadest sense of the word, but there is clearly a movement away from traditional religious institutions.

There should be more voices speaking for atheists, agnostics, and other unaffiliated Americans besides Bill Maher.

Camara recently launched an Indiegogo campaign to raise funds for his film.  The donations will support marketing the film and getting it on DVD.

If you support free and diverse speech, you might want to check out this film.

Where I Get Design News & Training

web design - text in vintage wood letterpress printing blocks against grunge metal typeset

I have been a professional web designer for five years.  I developed an interest in graphic and interactive design as a journalist covering technology issues when I had to design my own website seven years ago.  Since then, I have been hooked and have designed dozens of websites for other people over the years.

I also teach web design to other journalists.  Last week I had the opportunity to instruct a multimedia design for media development class in New York City for a group of journaIists from the developing world during UN Week.  Many were very excited to be in the class, as it is often difficult to receive this kind of training in their home countries.  They asked me how I got my training.  I told them that I took some traditional web and graphic design classes in the past, but I am mostly self taught from just taking in all the free resources online.

Technology is always changing, so I have to stay up to date with the latest news and innovations.  The students in the media development class asked me to share my resources on my blog.  The following is a short list of online resources for design training:

Smashing Magazine: This is the most popular online magazine for web designers and developers with useful resources in their blog and ebook series.

A List Apart: Another must-read website for web professionals.  They have great articles about the politics of web design, like this piece on making web design events more inclusive for young designers. Their sister company, A Book Apart, also sells a great selection of design ebooks.

Awwwards: This is a pretty cool website to go to see some of the most innovative websites from around the world.  You can even vote on the ones you like.

CSS Zen Garden: HTML and CSS go together like peanut butter and jelly (wait a minute…) You can learn how to design better style sheets straight from the pros.

W3Schools:  If you ever Google any HTML code, most likely a link from this website will pop at the top of the search list.  A great website for basic explanations and tutorials on regularly used coding.

Code Academy: Another great site to learn coding

Khan Academy: Good place to learn JavaScript through an interactive experience.

Graphic Design Blender: If you have any interest in freelancing, this is a great place to hear from other self employed designers talk shop and inside baseball on running your own business.

YouTube:  When in doubt, most likely someone already thought of doing a video tutorial about whatever web design question you have.

Graphic Design School: If I had to recommend one book you should read, it’s this one.  It gives you a basic foundation of graphic design principles that are useful for print and web.

Do you have other recommendations? Leave a comment or email me directly.

ISIS: The Art of Terrorist Media & Marketing

Dabiq Magazine covers

While the United States begins its airstrikes campaign in Syria, ISIS may have already won the media campaign.

As I was researching this topic, I stumbled upon an article about security intelligence firm The Soufan Group analyzing the brand strategies of ISIS and al-Qaeda.  (Yes, they study terrorist marketing!)  According to Ali Soufan, a former FBI agent, there is a generational clash between the two terror groups.  To be more precise, al-Qaeda is Microsoft, a once powerful organization that is now struggling to stay relevant, and ISIS is Apple, the new group for young hipsters.

ISIS is light years ahead of the days when al-Qaeda produced home videos of Osama bin Laden speaking in a cave somewhere.

It’s pretty obvious that ISIS takes their “brand” seriously.  From the high production value of their beheading videos, to their sophisticated social media strategy, to their slickly designed propaganda magazine “Dabiq,” which is named after a Syrian town where the last Islamic caliphate flourished during the 16th century.  In the multilingual online publication there is imagery of the “coming apocalypse” and calls on all Muslims to fight the “apostates” and “bring about the complete collapse of the modern American empire.”

ISIS clearly has a whole marketing team of writers, designers and videographers working behind the scenes.  As a matter of fact, it is believed that the whole media strategy is being run by Ahmad Abousamra, a 32-year-old Syrian-American man from the Boston area with a computer science degree from UMASS Boston.  Now there are reports that Boston, Los Angeles and Minneapolis are “jihad-pipeline” cities for recruiting new ISIS fighters.

ISIS’s marketing strategy has been compared to youth media brands like Vice or Buzzfeed.

From The Independent:

…To hammer that point home, see how IS has been promoting the profiles of its teenage recruits, clearly encouraging them to publicise the outfit’s brand through their Facebook accounts and other social media.Using the marketing techniques of media monitoring, Soufan points out that on Twitter, a massively influential recruitment and publicity tool for Islamic extremist groups, IS is “crushing” al-Qaeda. Savvy use of hashtags and clever – if warped – videos makes Twitter the perfect tool for the IS product, while al-Qaeda remains relatively silent on the social network. And, while Isis mentions on Twitter rocketed after its early capture of Mosul in June, al-Qaeda mentions increased far less – and that despite the massively heightened global conversation about Islamic terrorism. In recent weeks, al-Qaeda is barely getting mentioned more than it did before the fall of Mosul…

One problem ISIS (or ISIL or IS) has, according to Soufan, is that they might be “struggling” online because of the multiple names.  The U.S. government refers to them as ISIL, while most media outlets use ISIS.

From The Soufan Group:

In the last 30 days on English Twitter, “ISIS” was mentioned 1,371,277 times, while “Islamic State” was mentioned only 193,222 times (the less common English variation and term of reference, ISIL — the L for Levant — was mentioned 55,000 times in the same period).

Regardless, the group is still winning the branding war.

Soufan also notes that it might be difficult for ISIS to keep the momentum going over the next few months as they expand, just like how Apple has to keep people excited every time a new product is released.

The United States and its coalition now has to not only begin thinking about the known violence by ISIS in Iraq and Syria, but also the unknown domestic terror that can by struck by lone wolves who are inspired by ISIS’s inflammatory message. You know we are living in fascinating (or corrupted?) times when we are analyzing the marketing habits of a terrorist group!