I’ve been experimenting with the method of network analysis using Twitter data to understand how Second World War slogans are being used by people in conversations. I’m focusing on those slogans created or made popular by the Ministry of Information,…
An important part of my research project is to understand the potential meanings that people can draw from Ministry of Information propaganda posters of the Second World War. By investigating how people interpret these images and what thoughts and memories…
I spent some time at the National Archives recently, looking for administrative documents relating to the conception, design and distribution of the home front campaigns that I will be investigating in my fieldwork. I came across a document detailing a…
This article was originally published on the MoI Digital website on 21 November 2016. In the summer of 2016, Anne Olivier Bell celebrated her 100th birthday. She has enjoyed a varied career including working at the Ministry of Information, the…
Recently we’ve seen a bit of a craze for infographics: they are appearing in dedicated coffee table books on every subject, you now find them frequently in newspapers, magazines and online articles and all over social media. It is likely that social media has had some influence on this, since infographics make it easier for complex and often dull information to be shared within an eye-catching 140 characters with just a couple of clicks. Additionally it is now much easier to produce infographics with the availability of easy-to-use free software.
However, people have always wanted to share information with the public and visual images have always been a successful method of attracting attention. While that word ‘infographic’ only began to appear in the second half of the 20th century, they have existed in media under other names as soon as printing technology allowed them to.
One period when these kinds of images came into their own was during the Second World War, when graphic design techniques were flourishing and information needed to be controlled and disseminated quickly and successfully.