Posters as Historical Documents: A Resource for the Teaching of Twentieth-Century History

RODNEY F. ALLEN

Teachers of and the social
history
studies are always searching for
motivating materials for use with stu-
dents. Their quest is ever more impor-
tant in an era when students are the
products of visual media and when
long chapters of printed text are not
students' choice medium for learning
and reading comprehension is not as
high as teachers think it should be.

My experience suggests that posters
--a combination of visual images and
short textual messages for display in
public places--can be a powerful
teaching tool. The term poster was
originally used about 1838 in England
to refer to a printed sheet of paper
that combined text and illustration
( Weil 1984). Since then the art of
poster design has developed, always
directed to a vivid and powerful
presentation of a message. Today
those posters are a powerful record of
ideas, products, concerns, and
events. They are worthy of use in the
history classroom, and students can

RODNEY F. ALLEN is professor of social science education at Florida State Univer- sity, Tallahassee. An experienced history teacher, Allen participates in the education of teachers on campus and recently taught a course for teachers in Botswana.

develop appropriate history and civic skills through the systematic exami- nation of posters from the past.

The 1838 conception of a poster as a
union of words and pictorial material
for display in a public place is a good
definition. We might add that a poster
is always designed to communicate a
specific message--it is an intentional
art--imparting a thought, an idea, or
a concept clearly. It is not for personal
or private enjoyment, but is developed
for public display and to attract public
attention. It was designed to be under-
stood at a glance, communicating an
announcement or commercial to pass-
ers-by.

The poster designer works within
limits of space and time. Rarely does a
poster offer a mystery to be unraveled,
but rather it attempts to arrest atten-
tion (by eye catching) and deliver a
message swiftly and convincingly. It
uses popular symbols and popular idi-
oms--the language of the spectators in
its target audience. Poster designers
often reduce their image to a single ele-
ment, usually exaggerated, which will
be fixed in memory after a single
glance. With greater speed in travel in
the twentieth century, the poster has
had to be effective with the motorist
and commuter as well as the more lei-
surely passer-by.

The poster, then, is combination of
text and pictorial image designed for
a public place to (a) hold a viewer's
attention for a moment or two, (b)
use that moment to drive home a
message to a targeted audience, and
(c) leave the audience in a frame of
mind favorable to acting on the
message. That is, the poster must
arouse curiosity or stimulate interest
so that the viewer walks away with
the thought intended, leading to
taking the desired action.

Through its evolution, the poster
has been designed for many tasks--
filling theaters, selling products, laud-
ing merchandise, praising candidates
for public office, extolling holiday
resorts, selling ship and rail tickets,
attracting recruits and volunteers,
selling national unity during wartime,
and urging environmental conserva-
tion. Today, with powerful multi-me-
dia communication vehicles, the poster
remains a useful low-tech and low-cost
means of effective communication.

Governments in the ancient world
proclaimed their boundaries, legisla-

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