What aspects does a designer’s need to consider when creating of public health and safety signage?
It is estimated that one in three people over the age of 65 years will experience at least one fall in a year, rising to one in two people aged 80 years and over (O’Loughlin, Robitaille, Boivin & Suissa, 1993). Falls prevention is, therefore, a valuable and necessary health promotion activity for health and social care providers to engage in
Before I begin examining health and safety signage, it is worth noting t The cultural significance of RoSPA health and safety posters can be both overt, yet irritatingly tough to source. These artefacts offer a vivid glimpse into the past and hint to the context to the period they were born. These designs have continued to communicate their messages with a level of sophistication, precision, and experimentation that still inspires today. Frustratingly, RoSPA posters in nature are “fragile, and survive often by accident, in a haphazard and uncoordinated way.” Page 25 Its also noting that “other printed material which is routinely saved to provide the basis of future academic study – books, magazines and newspapers are collected by the British Library in a systematic way; posters are not.” Page 25 This can be seen as invaluable lose to a major part of English signage history. Making the designs that have survived even more precious.
The changing role of the designer was described, by Herbert Read, in “The Practice of Design” (1946). Read was optimistic that the technological virtues, “of precision, simplicity, calculation and economy would appeal to the industrial designer”
It’s hard to pin point the exact amount of accidents prevented, and measure the success and achievement of RoSPA designers like Tom Eckersley and Abraham games. But in 1944 Lord McGowan, President of RoSPA, recognises that, “within the chemical industry a period of two million accident-free man-hours had been recorded.” Reference, these figures were quoted by Lord McGowan in the “Annual Report to RoSPA Members” of 1944. The report is held in the RoSPA Archive at the University of Liverpool. National Executive Committee papers (D.226/2/1).
It’s worth mentioning that this achievement is even more impressive in context to the industrial expansion happening around the 1940s. “Some industries doubled in size in terms of infrastructure and workforce” page 9 This shows a testament to how important health prevention posters were in war time Britain, where industries were doubling in scale. And designers were still able to be relevant, and make such a positive contribution in industry’s that had seen such rapid development. “The RoSPA campaigns may be considered to have helped the war effort decisively and to have improved the quality of life of the industrial work” page 9
The use of photography in health and safety posters was held back by the “technical difficulties of printing large areas from half-tone blocks.” Pg13These technical constraints were resolved only at the very end of the 1930s. The print industry’s use of photomechanical processes however was further delayed by the ingrained resistance to this new media from designers and craftsmen within the industry. And by the reluctance of owners and shareholders to invest in new machinery. <(Gilmour:1977:pg23) describes the prevailing conservatism of lithographic printing in Britain.
One of the Tom Eckersley combined his work in design with map-making in the RAF (figure 1 p2).9 Pat Keely (see frontspiece) had established himself as a poster designer durting the 1930s. His tiny stature exempted him from active service. Manfred Reiss (figure 2 p6), Arnold Rothholz (figure 4 p10), Jan Lewitt, and George Him (figure 5 p12) were all émigré designers who had arrived in Britain before 1939. Abram Games was the most prolific poster designer of the war through his appointment as Official Poster Designer at the War Office.10 The circumstances of his role there left him no time for other commissions and the war was effectively an interruption in his association with RoSPA which had begun in 1938 and continued again immediately after the war. A single wartime RoSPA poster by Games is recorded (figure 6 p14).11 Games developed a dramatic poster style perfectly suited to the unambiguous messages required of graphic communication within the military. Page 15
The origins of RoSPA may be traced to the London Road Safety campaign of 1917.12 Their first campaigns were aimed at educating the metropolitan public about the dangers of increased traffic, especially in the difficult conditions of the blackout during war page 16
RoSPA’s Industrial Service was created as a consequence of the Factories Act of 1937.15 Before that date RoSPA’s activities had been focussed primarily on road safety and home safety. The 1930s was the period during which car ownership became much more widespread in England and also when speed restrictions were liberalised on British roads. RoSPA was therefore, along with the Automobile Association and the Royal Automobile Club, one of several organisations involved in lobbying Government on aspects of the motoring debate. It would be accurate to characterise RoSPA at this time as primarily a road safety organisation. Page 16
in September 1939, RoSPA had established itself as a safety organisation of national scope.1
By the outbreak of WW2, in September 1939, RoSPA had established itself as a safety organisation of national scope.16 It three main areas of activity concerned accident prevention on the road, in the home and at the workplace. Page 17
Lord McGowan, president of RoSPA, expressed the importance of RoSPA’s work by observing that, “an accident in the works is as much a gain to the enemy as a casualty in the armed forces.”1 page 17
In 1940 he expressed a similar sentiment with more force, “one of our fighters is missing if you are off work with an accident.”18 page 17
These views were projected beyond the RoSPA membership by the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill,19 who said that, “the factory and the fighting front are one.”20 page 17
Maybe this ^ could end rospa discussion, and lead onto a smile in the mind? Then cigarette advertsing?
Preparations for war had greatly extended the facilities available for shelter and for first aid. It was frustrating, for the agencies involved, to discover that those facilities were, at least in 1939, being used mostly by people who had injured themselves in the blackout or at work; rather than been victims of enemy attack. Page 18
The surprising magnitude of print media and cultural production during WW2 is revealed by Robert Harling’s introductory comments on book production in 1946 which states that, “during a period of strict governmental control and thus restricted competition, almost 5,000 different journals are still published in this country.” 23 The quantities of graphic communications including posters required by the effort of war were even more staggering.24 It is also worth noting that the prolonged nature of the war destroyed the political ecnomy of press advertsing and practically bankrupted the conservative print media. The intervention of the state was therefore crucial.25 page 19
The propaganda demands of the war economy required an engagement, on the part of administrators, designers and printers, with the technologies of mechanical reproduction.
In visual terms it is immediately clear that the posters avoid any pictorial reference to the obviously upsetting consequences of industrial injury. There is no attempt to shock or distress, or to show the physical damage caused by heavy or powerful machinery. Page 20
RoSPA posters often attempt to integrate image and type into a coherent design, using different typographic elements within a short message page 20
The use of these techniques in the graphic design of posters in Britain is unusual and needs to be accounted for. There is a remarkable self confidence in the design of these posters that is revealed in the willingness to leave empty, conveniently economical, space around the design and also in the use of a point-of-view that over-scales the image so as to create sense of monumentality. These are characteristics of effective poster design. Page 21
The stylistic characteristics of the RoSPA campaign are normally associated with avant-garde and Modernist forms of European graphic design during the 1920s and 30s. It is therefore remarkable to find them amongst the propaganda output of Britain during WW2. It is remarkable 29 Ades (1984) pp22-70 “Function and Abstraction in Poster Design.” 23 because the graphic design environment in Britain had, before 1939 and in the context of poster art, eschewed these kinds of Modernism in favour of a painterly artistic style. Page 22
I believe that the RoSPA posters are evidence of the evolution, in Britain, of a more complex Modernism, one that is configured by a combination of both ruptures and continuities and is therefore distinguished from its contemporary counterparts. The RoSPA posters provide compelling evidence of a successful integration of avant-gardist and foreign elements into the British design community. Conclusion? Page 22
This ignores the technological differences between, say, book production as letterpress and poster production as lithographic process. Furthermore it ignores the widely varying availability, or distribution, of these different technologies along with the very great difference in cost of these products. Page 33 Use this to talk about why posters were used in war time rather than other mediums.
Posters from ROSPA sensitive to the viewer in their explicitness, because of the wariness and anxiety of the working class during these times due to the consequences of war. Today, there’s a sense of detachment from explicit imagery because more precautionary steps in the workplace are taken to take you out from the situation. However, in war people are always at risk, and therefore always involved on a national level. The escalated pressure on people for the war effort and increase civilian casualties adds a level of living these in these situations every day, and there’s a bigger sense of national safety, because of a sense of total war pushed in peoples domestic lives.
The RoSPA campaign therefore qualifies as a significant precedent in the projection of humane social values through graphic design. – rephrase in own words
The circumstances of national emergency, under which the RoSPA campaign flourished, simply underline the significance of the socially orientated aspects of their campaign. Page 55