Let These WPA Posters Inspire Your Designs

Theresa Stone

In a recent blog post, Jonathan Hoefler of the Hoefler & Frere-Jones type foundry mentioned a Library of Congress collection of 926 Works Progress Administration posters. (The WPA funded public works projects in the United States from 1935 to 1943.) I’m both grateful to Hoefler and annoyed with him, because browsing that amazing collection disrupted an entire afternoon.
I mean, just look at them:








The type! The illustrations! The subject matter!
Every poster I viewed was listed as, “No known restrictions on publication.” And the Library of Congress has posted not just small JPEGs, but high-resolution TIFFs, which you can download for free! Our tax dollars at work.
Enough buildup. You can browse the entire WPA poster collection here.