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Introduction Politics and Graphic Design, two enormous concepts, both areas imbued with a wealth of history, and two areas in which I have a large personal interest in; as a member of the Labour Party and practising Graphic Designer; both form parts of my identity. Both areas are enormous in history and research on their own and can be debated in great depth in isolation, but for me, the real interest is when you bring them together and start to analyse how they interact as a duo. These are realms that are diverse and require a lot more time to explore them in full, you can dip in at any point in time and context and produce a fascinating study in its own right and settling down to write this it wasn’t totally obvious what I should cover, what proverbial sweet should I select, without trying to do it all. This research will focus on the Post-War period and the Posters that the Labour Party were using in General Elections in this timeframe. This research will analyse, explore and debate the vernacular of the Labour party in this period, how it used visual language to influence the public to vote for the party, and explore how the poster was used as a political tool. For this exploration, I will define the broad term of the ‘post-war period’ as being from 1945 lasting up until 1960. A time of great social but also aesthetic upheaval, as the World was reimagined in the aftermath of World War Two. I will approach this exploration by studying each general election that occurs in this period, starting with the watershed Labour Party win at the 1945 General Election, and continuing to analyse the 3 other elections in this period under the stewardship of Leader, Clement Attlee; 1950, 1951 and ending with the 1955 election. This will allow me to not only discuss the
Democracy in Print
3
