Person Who Brought ‘Keep Calm And Carry On’ Poster To Fame Shares Its Origin
Image via chrisdorney / Shutterstock.com
Once part of a World War II campaign to rally spirits in the UK, the “Keep Calm and Carry On” tagline is now familiar to people everywhere. Now that the world is in the midst of a pandemic, the phrase has reemerged to offer some comfort to those grappling with this difficult time.
“Keep Calm and Carry On” started becoming a thing of the modern era after Stuart Manley, co-owner of the Barter Books store in Alnwick, England, uncovered the World War II poster at the bottom of a box of books he and his wife Mary had purchased during an auction in 2000.
The artwork was intended as the last piece of a three-part campaign issued by the Ministry of Information during the war. However, people complained that the first two slogans—“Your Courage, Your Cheerfulness, Your Resolution Will Bring Us Victory” and “Freedom Is in Peril / Defend It With All Your Might”—were “patronizing,” so the now-famous tagline had never been publicized.
“If they had started with this one, I think it would have been just as popular then as it is now,” Manley told The Guardian in a recent interview.
The original ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ poster in Barter Books. Image via United Kingdom Government (public domain)
Stuart and Mary Manley enjoyed the poster’s message and decided to frame it up in their store. Turns out, customers loved it too and asked if they could buy it.
Manley wanted to make copies of the poster, but his wife was opposed to it, worried that reproductions might “spoil the purity.” He then sneakily printed 500 copies when she was on vacation.
While the poster became a “huge local and regional hit,” it didn’t amass national acclaim until the Guardian reporter Susie Steiner wrote a one-page feature on it in December 2005. “After that, all hell broke loose,” Manley recalled. Further, Christmas was around the corner so the couple was taking in “thousands of orders.”
“And that’s really when the phenomenon began,” he shared. Manley came to the realization that the “Keep Calm” poster had become a global sensation when he came across a mug with “Made in China” printed beneath.
While he isn’t fond of the parodies that have transpired from the slogan, he’s glad to know that the original message “has helped a lot of people.”
“When I’m asked why it was so popular, I always say the same thing: it’s cheaper than antidepressants,” he expressed.
The trend expectedly slowed down over time to just “two or three orders a month” over the last year. However, the number spiked to “a dozen a week” since the coronavirus outbreak, and while the poster’s popularity isn’t the same as back in 2005, Manley said it was “enough to prove it has a timely resonance.”
“It probably needs updating—Keep Calm and Stay at Home,” Manley concluded.
Susie Steiner, the former journalist who first reported on the poster, shared that she thinks the “Keep Calm” poster became so popular because it “speaks to unhappiness and depression with a message of stoicism and patience, which is helpful,” and reminds people to face troubling moments with calm rather than panic.
[via The Guardian, images via various sources]
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