Check out this audio slideshow of posters collated by Dr Laragh Gollogly from the World Health Organisation… I really MUST get around to submitting the article that I wrote on Venereal Disease posters… I wrote it in 2004, so it needs a bit of updating…

For travellers confined in aircraft cabins, buses, rail carriages and cruise ships, this is particularly good advice. Air-conditioning has many advantages, but one of its problems is that air-borne germs can circulate very quickly. No one wants to be responsible for spreading coughs and sneezes, or any kind of flu, over several continents in the process of one long-haul flight or ‘cruise of a lifetime’.

April 2009 (also see October 2009, and a commentary)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRmpJ_dORXA]

1945

The world is gripped by the fear of Swine Flu, as the World Health Organisation upgrades the current level of pandemic alert from phase 4 to 5.  This does need to be kept in perspective as it is an unfortunate fact that thousands die every year from bog standard flu, and the current epidemic has not led to deaths in Europe at least.

Keep Calm and Carry On

However, this does give an option for the Keep Calm and Carry On to yet again be put to another use, and Zazzle is straight on it with “Keep Calm and Don’t Sneeze” – yet another clever use of the slogan, and its accompanied monetisation. They are not the only ones to pick up on the connection, as has Simon Calder, Jayne Dowle, Deborah Orr, Dan Ariely, South Wales Argus, Vince in  Vancouver, and The Moustacho. Thanks to @SimplerDave on Twitter for pointing this out to me via Twitter!

Coughs and Sneezes Spread Diseases

Just wondering how long before these images make their way out again (I’m giving a paper on this in September). I was talking about this with someone a couple of years ago, as the flu jab leaflets looked distinctly Second World War style – and I guess they were aimed at that generation! Meantime, watch this 1945 video.

Working Title: ‘Selling a Healthy War’: propaganda posters and public information films produced by the Ministry of Information during the Second World War.

Abstract:
The wartime poster “Keep Calm and Carry On” was one of three produced by the Ministry of Information (MOI) in 1939, kept in reserve in case of necessity. The MOI, officially formed at the outbreak of the Second World War, was the central governmental publicity machine. Its role was to tell the citizen ‘clearly and swiftly what he is to do, where he is to do it, how he is to do it and what he should not do’.

“Keep Calm and Carry On” has had a credit-crunch induced renaissance in 2009. Mass-Observation, collecting reaction at the time, found many decreed them “too solemn” with a yearning for a “bit of humour”. Wartime propaganda was not produced without planning, planning for the 1939 campaign had commenced in 1935. The MOI had comprehensive strategies, covering not only posters, but radio, press and film.

“Health is a Munition of War” declared the “Fighting Fit” exhibition in 1943: poor health led to absenteeism, which had an impact on war production. This paper will examine surviving posters and public information films from the campaign “Coughs and Sneezes Spread Diseases” as forms of inter-textual promotion. Cinema and posters, both visual medium, complemented each other in a cohesive strategically planned campaign, drawing upon images of how it was ‘appropriate’ for the democratic British ‘citizen’ to behave in a time of war, often using the British ‘secret weapon’ of humour.

Biography

Dr Bex Lewis is an Honorary Research Fellow in History at the University of Winchester. The focus of her research is upon British propaganda posters, further information can be found on http://ww2poster.co.uk. Her most recent publication is a chapter for London Transport Posters: A Century of Art and Design, and she was a major contributor to: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/theartofwar/. Having promoted interdisciplinary research at the University of Manchester, and travelled around the world, she is currently an Associate Lecturer in History, Media Studies and Design for Digital Media at the University of Winchester.