Keep Calm and Carry On

Forgive me for interrupting your awesome day, but I wanted to share with you a bit of inspiration and fun!

I recently came across this poster, and decided to find out its history. It really quite interesting, and you can find the complete article here.

This poster was originally created by the UK in 1939, during WWII. It had a very small distribution, but was used to raise the morale of the troops, along with two variations:

Wikipedia says: "The slogans were created by civil servants, with a career civil servant, Waterfield, coming up with 'Your Courage' as 'a rallying war-cry that will bring out the best in everyone of us and put us in an offensive mood at once'. These particular posters were designed as 'a statement of the duty of the individual citizen', un-pictorial, to be accompanied by more colloquial designs."

In 2000, the "Keep Calm" poster was rediscovered in a second-hand bookshop in Northumberland. Because the copyright expired after 50 years, the image went into public domain, and the store owners were allowed to reproduce it on request.

The image became really popular, as it inspired tons of new merchandise-- clothing, mugs, throw pillows, etc. And of course, there are the more recent versions:

For Tenor:

For Abby:

For Ariel:

For Dane-Marc:

For Mom:

For Dad:

And my personal favorite:

And now I shall return to my regularly scheduled writing time instead of being distracted by epic memes. Thank you, Waterfield.

Have an idea for a poster? Design your own and order merchandise here!