Abram Games was a British graphic designer. The style of his work – refined but vigorous compared to the work of contemporaries – has earned him a place in the pantheon of the best of 20th-century graphic designers. In acknowledging his power as a propagandist, he claimed, "I wind the spring and the public, in looking at the poster, will have that spring released in its mind." Because of the length of his career – over six decades – his work is essentially a record of the era's social history. Some of Britain's most iconic images include those by Games. An example is the "Join the ATS" poster of 1941, nicknamed the "blonde bombshell" recruitment poster. His work is recognised for its "striking colour, bold graphic ideas, and beautifully integrated typography".
Join the ATS (1941) Art.IWMPST2832
The Festival of Britain emblem – the Festival Star – designed by Abram Games, from the cover of the South Bank Exhibition Guide, 1951
Poster by Games advertising tourism for the island of Jersey.
British European Airways advertising poster by Games.
War Artists' Advisory Committee
The War Artists' Advisory Committee (WAAC), was a British government agency established within the Ministry of Information at the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 and headed by Sir Kenneth Clark. Its aim was to compile a comprehensive artistic record of Britain throughout the war. This was achieved both by appointing official war artists, on full-time or temporary contracts and by acquiring artworks from other artists. When the committee was dissolved in December 1945 its collection consisted of 5,570 works of art produced by over four hundred artists. This collection was then distributed to museums and institutions in Britain and around the world, with over half of the collection, some 3,000 works, going to the Imperial War Museum.
Factory workers going to work at the Mather & Platt, Manchester, in the snow, by L. S. Lowry, 1943
The Passage to the Control-room at South West Regional Headquarters, Bristol, (Art. IWM ART LD 170), by John Piper
Coggeshall Church, Essex, (Tate, 1940) by John Armstrong
A Brother and Sister Sheltering in the Underground, 1941, (Art.IWM ART LD 795), by Edmond Xavier Kapp