Propaganda Posters and Illustraton; Propaganda Technique and Its Eddects on Graphic Design

During WWI, the US government organized the Committee on Public Information in order to promote a positive image of America's involvement in the war to the common citizen. The committee possessed several divisions, such as the division of news or the speaking division. The Division of Pictorial Publicity produced 700 kinds of posters and other graphic advertisement to promote the government's policy and to inspire American patriotism. That was the first national propaganda activity using multimedia, especially graphic design. Posters in particular played a very important role as an easy, effective medium for advertising. The government appointed an illustrator the chairperson of the division and many artists contributed to the presentation of the government's current message on the posters. In this paper, I investigate each war poster to show the mechanics of propaganda in graphic medium; the relationships between pictorial design and message, message and written words, and the effects of illustration