Get Excited and Keep Calm

Yesterday in the New York Times a really interesting article ran about the role design plays (or should play) during an economic downturn. One of the images the paper used is the new Get Excited and Make Things poster by Matt Jones ($20, $50, $200) inspired by the hugely popular Keep Calm and Carry on Poster ($24)—which people are calling the pin-up of our age. The poster was also the pin-up for Britons living in fear of Nazi Germany during WWII. I'm thinking it was even more the pin-up of their age, but, in any case, I don't disagree that the poster is immensely popular today as a novelty. The original propaganda poster made its debut in August of 1939. Today you can find reproductions of the "Keep Calm" poster in homes, bars, design shops, on coffee mugs and even government offices. In fact, according to The Guardian, "The Lord Chamberlain's Office at Buckingham Palace, the prime minister's strategy unit at No 10, the Serious Fraud Office, the US embassy in Belgium, the vice chancellor of Cambridge University, the Emergency Planning Office at Nottingham council and the officers' mess in Basra have all ordered posters. Even David Beckham has the T-shirt, we are told."