At this point, I would venture to say that many people have spotted "keep calm and carry on" somewhere. I had been vaguely aware of the fact that it had been used in Second World War-era British propaganda ("The bloody Jerries may be slowly reducing our great metropolises to dust, but our collective stiff upper lip shall prevail!") though, as I learned from the
relevant Wikipedia entry, the iconic poster, designed in 1939, was never actually used and only re-discovered in 2000, at which point it became the phenomenon that it is today. The extent to which this apothegm (sorry, GRE word) has caught on did not occur to me until I came across, via
Andrew Sullivan, a whole
slew of parodies on the phrase.
That is what inspired me to scour the internet for even more of them. I present my favourites below -- including the original "keep calm and carry on" -- all in convenient 100x100 squares, in the event that anyone wishes to use one as a web avatar (I've been using "keep calm and think of England" since, well, I unwillingly departed England).
Meanwhile, I've managed to incorporate "keep calm and carry on" into my daily life. I use an application called Dexpot to set up four separate workspaces on my laptop, and, for my fourth workspace -- my designated workspace for actual work -- I created a wallpaper with the "shut up and start writing" graphic so as to discourage me from wasting too much time when I should be getting constructive, useful things done.
Finally, before I left Oxford, I swung by the Blackwell Art and Poster Shop on Broad Street to see if I could actually buy a "keep calm and carry on" poster. To my pleasant surprise, the store also had other propaganda posters from that era in stock, so, taking advantage of their 3-for-2 deal, I brought these back home with me to the States:
They'll be going up on the walls of my dorm room at Georgetown, as I imagine I will need exactly this kind of moxie to survive the academic Blitz that will be my senior year.
Posts
Hahaha. I love this, and I love that you made one of them the background for your "work" desktop. I used Dexpot when I had a PC - Did you know that Macs will do the same thing for you automatically?
At any rate, my two faves are definitely Keep Calm and Carry a Wand, and Keep Calm and Blog.
Good to have you back! When are you getting to campus?
Yes, Macs have that application called Spaces, right? Though I wouldn't ordinarily admit to liking anything about Macs, Spaces is quite nifty, though Dexpot seems to do the trick quite well. When I first started using it, my taskbar enjoyed disappearing every now and then, but that problem thankfully seems to have gone away!
I'll be moving in 28 August -- terrifyingly soon, eek! Saw via Buzz that you're already back on the Hilltop, so we'll definitely have to meet up for tea or some such when I am back. :)
Okay so basically, this is amazing. I had a dark-turquoise version of the standard Keep Calm and Carry On poster hanging right above my in-tray in Parliament for the last year.
Is there any chance you have a large/HQ version of this square graphic? because I think it would make an amazing poster.
Firstly, that is the most amazing & appropriate thing to have hanging above an in-tray, so excellent choice of poster there!
Secondly, a quick Google search turns up this -- http://www.ymydew.com/blog/archives/keep_calm_BLUE.jpg -- which is a light turquoise, though I could easily swap that for a darker shade. x
Brilliant.