Thanks to J.J. Sedelmaier, an avid reader of the Huffington Post, I learned of this video about the origins of the now famously trendy “Keep Calm and Carry On” poster. It was commissioned by the British government as one of a series of home front propaganda posters at the outset of World War II in a run of over 2.5 million, but never officially issued. It was found by the proprietors of Barter Books in the U.K. and has since catapulted into icon status equal to, if not more popular than Che Guevara’s shining visage, which is also now on everything from T-shirts to purses to mugs to lord knows what.
In this charmingly informative video produced by Barter Books of Northumberland, we learn that the posters were printed with a “special and handsome” typeface that the German’s could not counterfeit – though I don’t know why not. If they could make jet planes and nuclear material, they could certainly forge a typeface.
