The storm over the "Calm"

by: Jeff Cottrill

August 10, 2009 2:00 PM

Comments: (1)

So what’s the deal with the cover of the latest Toronto Life? To highlight a story about climate change, swine flu and other pending disasters, the cover shows a stark red background displaying the bold, white capitalized words “Keep Calm and Read On,” under a King George VI crown logo. The design is a reference to an old motivational poster, “Keep Calm and Carry On,” which the British government produced but never used.

Decades later, the poster has taken on a new life that its unknown creator never could have imagined. Here is a brief history of it:

It was 1939, and war was in the air. Britain needed a way to comfort its citizens and boost national morale in the face of a Nazi-Germany attack. Before television and the Internet, there was the propaganda poster.

Less than a month before Hitler invaded Poland, hundreds of posters began appearing all over Britain with slogans reminding everybody to keep a stiff upper lip no matter what might happen: “Your Courage, Your Cheerfulness, Your Resolution Will Bring Us Victory” and the more blunt “Freedom Is in Peril.”

Those posters were meant to prepare Brits for German gas attacks and bombing blitzes — the latter of which came the following year. A third, “Keep Calm and Carry On,” was prepared in case of invasion. The government printed about 2.5 million copies of “Keep Calm,” but they were shelved and likely pulped in the end. Today, only two known original copies exist.

One of the those copies mysteriously turned up in a box of books that Alnwick, England bookseller Stuart Manley bought in a 2000 auction. He and his wife put the poster up in their shop, Barter Books, and it became a hit with their customers, many of whom asked if they could buy it. The Manleys soon decided to make copies to sell, since the copyright would have expired in 1989 according to British law.

Sales of the poster skyrocketed after a national magazine featured it as a gift idea in 2005. Since then, “Keep Calm and Carry On” has become a cult phenomenon in the UK and beyond. It’s in pubs, shops, homes and offices everywhere in Britain. Even the British Prime Minister’s office ordered a copy, as did the American Embassy in Belgium.

The design has appeared on T-shirts, coffee mugs, shopping bags, doormats, and more. The British website www.keepcalmandcarryon.com sells the slogan on clothes, notebooks, greeting cards, deck chairs, even cufflinks. Barter still gets an average of 1,000 orders a month, from both British and international customers.

There’s even a parody — a version with the crown logo upside-down and the message “Now Panic and Freak Out” And an altered version of the poster appeared in Black Dossier, a graphic novel in The League of Extraordinary Gentleman series.

In T.O., silkscreens of the poster are available at Smash (2880 Dundas W), in five colours: red, black, orange, yellow and sea-foam green. It’s ironic that they don’t have it in blue, which is considered the calmest in the colour spectrum.

Why is an old World War II propaganda poster so popular 70 years later? Is it because these times are as uncertain and frightening as the WWII was — maybe more so? We’ve got economic problems, environmental destruction, terrorism, disease outbreaks, unnecessary wars, mass poverty and more. The slogan may be more relevant to our generation as it would have been to those in the ’30s. Could be it’s just the message we need right now.

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The storm over the "Calm"

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