Find the visual business cliches in this holiday poster from XPLANE. Boil the Ocean. Low-hanging Fruit. Drink the Kool Aid. Find the Strawman. (big PDF you really have to zoom in to appreciate).
posted by mathowie on Dec 21, 2009 - 57 comments

Mad Men: Soviet Style. Beautiful advertising posters from the USSR.
posted by grumblebee on Nov 4, 2009 - 54 comments

Jean M. Fasse (Red Cross during WWII, and later the Special Service). Shirley Ann Thacker (WAVE). Just two of the interviews from the extensive collection of material (photographs, letters, diaries, scrapbooks, oral histories and posters) at the Women Veterans Historical Collection.
posted by tellurian on Oct 14, 2009 - 4 comments

50 years of space exploration on on huge poster.
posted by pjern on Oct 11, 2009 - 44 comments

From the Prints & Photographs Division Library of Congress - browse through more than 1900 World War I posters. You can also search or look by subject heading. [via] [more inside]
posted by cashman on Oct 8, 2009 - 8 comments

First seen on the web this week, posters have sprung up in LA and Atlanta. Interesting discussions on the Washington Post.com site. Lots of different ideas about the posters and their meaning. Tampa Bay Times takes up the debate.
posted by garnetgirl on Aug 8, 2009 - 127 comments

Canadian War Poster Collection at McGill University. And if that doesn't strike your fancy, the list of digital collections include such time-honoured favourites as Expo '67, and the award-winner for unexpected collection, Gynaecology in Traditional Chinese Medicine. (previously)
posted by flibbertigibbet on Jun 26, 2009 - 7 comments

The Digital Library of Slovenia has (among other things) music [like this] [previously], posters [like this] and photographs [like this].
posted by tellurian on Apr 14, 2009 - 12 comments

Movie posters carry the movie in one still image. But they're also a great overview of trends, both artistic and popular. Modern major film posters are common enough, and if you're looking for some discussion of modern posters, Movie Poster Addict might be your scene. But dig deeper and you come across quality versions of foreign films, such as Mexican posters (deep link to a section of Pulp Morgue) or hand painted posters from Russia, India and Pakistan, even the US. MeFi's own flapjax at midnite shared a collection of recent finds from the 1960s and '70s on in this Flickr set. [flapjax at midnite's collection via mefi projects] Some-what pre-vious-ly on Me-ta-Filter. And not from MetaFilter, but from our favorite list site: 20 baffling foreign movie posters.
posted by filthy light thief on Mar 18, 2009 - 13 comments

ObamiconMe. Remake your image in a style inspired by Shepard Fairey's election poster. [more inside]
posted by zinfandel on Jan 13, 2009 - 30 comments

Hochbetrieb [Nuts & Bolts] is a 2003 short from Germany that utilizes live actors and computer-generated effects in tribute to influences ranging from silent comedies to Charles Ebbetts' images of construction crews atop the GE Building, along with a cat & mouse cartoon from MGM guest-starring a baby and a Warner Brothers piece about an amphibian.
posted by Smart Dalek on Jan 12, 2009 - 2 comments

In 1939, King George VI commissioned the Ministry of Information to produce three posters designed to reassure and prepare the British nation for an inevitable war. The posters were designed not so much to deliver any specific instruction, but rather to suggest an attitude - from King to country - towards the unknown. Stiff upper lip, old boy. KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON. [more inside]
posted by 6am on Nov 19, 2008 - 38 comments

Power To The Poster
posted by sciurus on Nov 19, 2008 - 13 comments

The Subway Sun and The Elevated Express &reswere posters used to inform passengers travelling on the IRT. A couple that tickled my fancy - the unlikely to happen Sociability Limit and an Obnoxious Custom. [via]
posted by tellurian on Nov 5, 2008 - 15 comments

100 Illustrated Horror Film Posters part 1 and 2 [more inside]
posted by Mitheral on Oct 31, 2008 - 27 comments

Apparently whenever US movies were released in Soviet-era Poland, the posters were discarded and replaced by new versions by Polish artists. Alternately disturbing and frickin' awesome, and often containing political comments of varying subtlety. Previously.
posted by genghis on Sep 6, 2008 - 60 comments

Art of the Poster 1880-1918 has high-quality scans of 162 posters. The images can either be viewed through a zooming window in the browser or exported in enormous resolutions (export image link in top left corner of image page). Here are some of my favorite posters: Scribner's Fiction Number, Between the Acts All Tobacco Cigarettes, Palais de la Danse, Starnberger-see, Read the Sun, Cercle Artistique de Schaerbeek, Bosch-licht, XXV Ausstellung Secession and Cabaret du Chat Noir.
posted by Kattullus on Aug 1, 2008 - 21 comments

Vintage ads galore.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Jul 12, 2008 - 25 comments

proggensaffischer.se - alternative, political and swedish poster art. The main gallery can be found here. [The site is in swedish, some of the posters are NSFW.] [more inside]
posted by soundofsuburbia on Feb 11, 2008 - 1 comment

The Entire Federal Government in Six Square Feet
posted by konolia on Jan 15, 2008 - 41 comments

The Ephemera Society was glancingly mentioned prior, but deserves a better mention. It includes:
—An exhibit, an article, and links to Michael Ragsdale's 9/11 ephemera.
—A history of Coca-cola print ephemera.
—An article by Will Shortz on the ephemeral history of the crossword.
—Articles from the Louisiana Library Association's journal issue on ephemera, including Principles for Organizing an Ephemera Collection and an Overview of Political Ephemera.
posted by klangklangston on Jan 5, 2008 - 11 comments

What variety of Geek are you? You can probably find yourself on The 56 Geeks Poster. Via
posted by bove on Dec 5, 2007 - 90 comments

The Web Is Agreement: a poster (large, huge) designed by Paul Downey.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Oct 31, 2007 - 22 comments

The Color of Top Grossing Movies. A movie’s theatrical poster is only a very small part of the larger marketing and hype machine that turns movies into spectacular blockbusters, but as part of a whole, they are fairly representative of the “image” of any given movie. So, as an exercise in color trends, and to see if any significant pattern emerged, I decided to break down the colors of 25 posters — the top 5 of each MPAA category.
posted by brain_drain on Sep 12, 2007 - 35 comments

Iraq's Horror Movie Posters. According to Sky News, insurgent forces are taking up Worth1000 style criticism to hold up a mirror to citizens of the US and their Military-Entertainment complex.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur on Jul 9, 2007 - 27 comments

It being the 5th of November and that… here's a bit of fireworks nostalgia.
posted by tellurian on Nov 5, 2006 - 19 comments

Japanese Pink Movies, and posters. [nudity]
posted by hama7 on Oct 25, 2006 - 24 comments

Tabblo looks pretty cool. It will integrate with Flickr photos (or upload your own) and let you make a collage-style poster that can be had for $20. Very web 2.0-ish, but seems to be well executed. This could be an easy way to make a poster of album art? (via Lifehacker, via Techcrunch).
posted by rossination on Sep 15, 2006 - 20 comments

The Room: The Movie. Triple-threat (actor/writer/director) Tommy Wiseau made his cinematic debut in 2003 with the The Room (see trailer and various scenes), "a blend between a softcore porn flick and a Tennessee Williams stageplay." Wiseau ("who's not just one of the most unusual looking and sounding-with an unidentifiable Eastern European accent-leading men ever to grace the screen, but a narcissist nonpareil whose movie makes Vincent Gallo's "The Brown Bunny" seem the apotheosis of cinematic self-restraint...may be something of a first: A movie that prompts most of its viewers to ask for their money back-before even 30 minutes have passed." - Variety), allegedly raised $6 million outside Hollywood to cover production and marketing costs of the self-described "black comedy about love, passion, betrayal and lies" (see various rough dress rehersals). Audience members, including comedian David Cross, have been "marveling at the bizarre editing, bad bluescreen, uncomfortably explicit sex scenes and, of course, the enigma of Wiseau himself" as the film played monthly for years in Los Angeles. Available on DVD, diehard "roomies" swear by the theatrical experience, shout out their own commentary, hurl spoons at the screen and singalong to the soundtrack. Some call it "The Rocky Horror of the New Millenium" and stage "Room" parties. If you look at the marketing campaign or survived a screening you might see The Room as "a seminar on how NOT to make a movie." [Inspired by Boing Boing]
posted by boost ventilator on Jun 1, 2006 - 28 comments

AIGA: Inequality Matters
posted by ijoshua on Apr 10, 2006 - 15 comments

Using fine-art images to promote movies: "But it was Mr. Kessell's "Florilegium" (or "collection of floral images") daguerrotypes that caught Mr. Palen's eye: each image is close-up of a surgical instrument, so poetically rendered that it seems almost organic. Some of the macabre implements resemble exotic flowers. One, from a distance, could be mistaken for the horns of a gazelle. "We were sort of blocked, and all the pieces fell into place once I saw that image," Mr. Palen explained. A deal was made to use that daguerreotype [to promote the upcoming Tarantino-produced film "Hostel"], which actually shows a surgical clamp. [The poster] now appears in theaters and on widespread promotions. [Side: direct WMV link of Tarantino spazing out while introducing "Hostel's" director Eli Roth at a festival.]
posted by JPowers on Jan 4, 2006 - 12 comments

Some are stark. Some are funny. Some are blunt. All are beautiful; all are raising money for the Red Cross's relief efforts in New Orleans; all are part of the Hurricane Poster Project, "a collaborative effort of the design community."
posted by docgonzo on Nov 15, 2005 - 13 comments

Custom Flickr photo books & posters.
posted by Vidiot on Sep 7, 2005 - 23 comments

Loose lips sink ships!!!1 (There be images, some quite big here) I suspect a lot of MeFi shares my obsession with propaganda (and propaganda-style) posters, both domestic and foreign, as well as the photoshops that the Something Awful or Fark crowds generate. CoolGov has a link today to the Office of the National National Counterintelligence Executive and their Anti-Espionage poster collection. Some are great, some are almost pure propaganda, and some show how obsessed with secrecy our government has become. That lead me to Google to look for posters on the *.gov and *.mil domains. Check out the posters for "Venemous Snakes of Afghanistan and Pakistan", or what the well dressed airmen is wearing (*note the "Essentials"), posters from the NOAA telling you that "lightning kills", the Code of Ethics for Government Officers and Employees, and this one telling GI's why smoking could kill them.
posted by rzklkng on Apr 18, 2005 - 22 comments

The Happy Poster Project : because Nothing is Unpossible.
posted by whatnot on Mar 28, 2005 - 18 comments

Street Memes. a sticker, stencil, or poster that can spread a single image around the world. Unlike traditional graffiti art where each piece is unique, street memes can be copied repeatedly, taking on a life of their own, and spreading through the collective effort of people scattered around the world. [via Eyebeam reBlog]
posted by soundofsuburbia on Jun 25, 2004 - 12 comments

Penguin Warehouse.
posted by hama7 on Dec 30, 2003 - 15 comments

Adult and exploitation movie posters from the 1960s and the early 1970s. Days of Sin and Nights of Nymphomania, Ordered to Love (teen-age girls forced to submit in secret Nazi mating camps!), Uncle Tomcat's House of Kittens, and more! Meow!
posted by sparky on Oct 31, 2003 - 4 comments

The Picture of Everything. If it is a thing, it's in this here picture. [props to Ober Dicta]
posted by Hildago on Oct 28, 2003 - 21 comments

US National Archives & Records Administration Exhibit Hall. Some good American history pieces - the Emancipation Proclamation, government drawings, 20th century photographs, the New Deal and the arts, panoramic photography, 1970s Chicago, World War 2 posters, gifts to presidents, and more.
posted by plep on Jul 3, 2003 - 4 comments

Ok, I'm not the American Idol type, but I was aimlessly link clicking and I came to settle on the From Justin to Kelly movie site. Okay, yeah the movie is gonna suck worse that Battlefield Earth meets Ishtar, but as I clicked a link there to see the "poster you voted on!" I noticed Kelly's butt suddenly had suddenly grown to JLo-like dimensions. Before Betty Crocker's PixelHelper...and After.... Baby's got back! Now, who in the long line of marketing weasels and designers working on this poster said "Let's make her butt bigger"? This is the girl that caught criticism for being too big at a whopping size 6 or something. Are they trying to sexy her up? Make her appeal to more latin/black audiences? Was that corner of the poster just not curvy enough? This one really bugs, and puzzles me.
posted by Dome-O-Rama on May 14, 2003 - 39 comments

Saigon Poster Art. "A Growing Collection of Pictures"
posted by hama7 on Mar 12, 2003 - 18 comments

Bar Signs. Modern Drunkard has posted a handy guide for the alcoholic in us all, a set of gestures to communicate your needs when it's too loud to hear, or just because, as the site says, "when words come out, whiskey can't get in."
posted by jonson on Dec 16, 2002 - 21 comments

Secure Beneath the Watchful Eyes; Big Brother goes retro. In the artistic tradition of classic London Transport poster art comes this sinister-looking campaign. Reminiscent of these parodies, but the art is better and they're not kidding.
posted by George_Spiggott on Oct 28, 2002 - 29 comments

Ease of Use? IBM sends mixed message... see how complicated the instructions are to order this poster.
posted by TNLNYC on Jun 20, 2002 - 15 comments