In some ways, nothing is ever new, and perhaps reflecting on how we have responded to emergency situations in the past, through our archives, offers insights into our current situation. While we may not have lived through such a pandemic-induced lockdown in our lifetimes, we can seek inspiration from earlier generations who brought information and morale-boosting messages to the population, without social media for easy communications, during the uncertain times of the Second World War and its aftermath.
Represented in the University Archives and Special Collections Centre is the work of film director Thorold Dickinson and the poster designer Tom Eckerlsey; both creators designed and produced public information from the 1930s to the 1950s.
Tom Eckersley
Eckersley (1914-1997) was a poster artist and design teacher who established the first graphic design course in Britain at the London College of Printing (now London College of Communication). His archive includes examples of his Second World War safety posters designed for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA). Pertinent to today’s public information messaging, Eckersley's designs have one common factor: they bring together text and pictures to relate complex messages in a direct way. For example, related to today’s plight for Personal Protective Equipment, is the poster ‘Take warning – wear goggles’. Also, encouraging hygiene and first aid to avoid infection transmission, ‘Open door for germs’.
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Tom Eckersley 'Take warning - wear goggles'. TE/1/22/5, University Archives and Special Collections Centre
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Tom Eckersley 'Open door for germs'. TE/1/22/10, University Archives and Special Collections Centre
Thorold Dickinson
Using the medium of film, Dickinson (1903-1984) started his career as a film editor and made fiction films before working as a film director for the Ministry of Information during the Second World War and at the United Nations from 1956-60. He directed or supervised short information films encouraging men and women to support the war effort, such as ‘Yesterday is Over your Shoulder’; as well as titles such as ‘Exposure’, ‘In Our Hands’ and ‘A Scary Time’ for the United Nations Department of Public Information in 1958-59.
Like Eckersley, he also moved into higher education, joining the Slade School of Fine Art in 1960 as Head of Film Studies in the newly formed Film Department.
Today we see Public Information brought to us through public sector broadcasts from the BBC, as well as many social media platforms, relying on well-known TV personalities to disseminate the government’s guidelines on isolation and social-distancing, encouraging everyone to protect the NHS and save lives. So it is interesting to consider how the work of these two designers of the mid-20th century might have responded to the current COVID-19 pandemic.
A key difference between earlier decades and 2020, is that now nearly all of us can embrace the opportunity to interact with the method of the messaging; to virtually shout out our thanks to the NHS and other key workers who are at the vanguard of our current lives and to record our own diaries and messages of hope to share with our fellow humanity, our families and loved ones, whether or not we can literally embrace them as we would wish to.
Resources and contact
You can search the archive of these creators using the online catalogue.
Posters from the Eckersley Collection have been digitised and are available on the VADS website. The Archives Hub also hosts an online exhibition of the Tom Eckersley Collection, and RoSPA has digital images of his posters.
You can watch a selection of Thorold Dickinson’s films, for free, on the BFI Player.
Keep in touch via our Twitter and Instagram, or email us directly: archive-enquiries@arts.ac.uk.