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Designs on Delivery: GPO Posters 1930-1960

“This month the University of the Arts London Archive and Special Collections Centre and the British Postal Museum & Archive present the first poster exhibit from the Royal Mail Archive, with additional items from UAL on display in the Archive Centre. The University of the Arts London is also showing on loop the film Night Mail (1936) which the British Film Institute calls “one of the most popular and instantly recognised films in British film history … one of the most critically acclaimed films .. [of the] documentary film movement”.

To mark the occasion this month’s feature provides online access to this exciting new exhibition ‘Designs on Delivery: GPO Posters from 1930 to 1960′. Focusing on a period when designers such as Edward McKnight Kauffer (1890-1954), Tom Eckersley (1914-1995), Leonard Beaumont (1891-1986) and F. K. Henrion (1914-1990) were working and the General Post Office was at the cutting edge of poster design and mass communication the posters are arranged by theme to illustrate the organisation’s aims. Through the medium of basic text, images and colour the posters show how the posters translated, often complex, messages to the public in order to educate them. Technological developments in the postal service which comment on social changes, such as the introduction of airmail, can also be traced through the posters.”

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