May has come with a bang when it comes to posters as I walked to work today in Manhattan. It started off w/ me walking Maddie and running into a huge dog poster with the word Heel. That was followed up by the simple yet compelling Chad poster for the HBO presentation of Recount. Then as I walked by the Paul Smith store in SoHo I nearly tripped when I saw a decent collection of posters from the May 1968 Paris Street Rebellion. Through a bit of googling I found out what the Paul Smith window display was about.“To celebrate the Anniversary of May 68 and to coincide with an exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, Paul Smith will be the only vendor to sell a book produced exclusively to commemorate the artwork surrounding May 68.”. In case you weren’t around in 1968 and weren’t following the events of Paris the site also mentions what the posters were representing. “May 68 initially focused around protests from French students, creatives and musicians worried about the state of education and employment. These protest lead to a general strike and rioting that were seen to “shake up” old society. May 68 is important in French History as it is considered to be the watershed moment that saw the replacement of conservative morality (religion, patriotism, respect for authority) with the liberal morality (equality, sexual liberation, human rights) that dominates French society today.” To finish of my walk in SoHo before i ended up at work i came across a postal box that had a poster covering an ad that was pretending to be a poster. All in all my quiet walk turned to quite the morning to see design outside.
UPDATE
More context to the posters from the CR Blog www.creativereview.co.uk/crblog/may-1968-a-graphic-uprising/
