Date: May 20th
Category: Visual Culture | Historical Resistance | Art & Activism
Before social media, before newsprint, before TikToks and Threads, there were walls.
And people with glue.
For centuries, protest posters have spoken truth to power — sometimes in type, sometimes in ink, sometimes in furious brushstrokes smeared on damp city walls. They are the visual voices of the unheard, the mood boards of revolutions, and — let’s be honest — they often look incredible.
Today, The Time Traveller’s Guild peels back the paste and reveals a gallery of radical visual resistance, from medieval margins to modern placards.
🪧 A Brief History of Glued-Up Grit
✒️ 1. Pamphlet to Poster – 17th & 18th Century Broadsides
- Used during the English Civil War, French Revolution, and American independence movements
- Often featured bold headlines, woodcuts, and very shouty fonts
- Posted in taverns, markets, and church doors — early social media, really
🖨️ “Join us at dawn! Bring pitchforks!”
🎭 2. Liberté in Lithograph – 19th Century Paris
- La Commune (1871) produced a wave of revolutionary art
- Posters by artists like Gustave Courbet demanded workers’ rights, education, and women’s suffrage
- Printed overnight, slapped onto walls before sunrise
🇫🇷 Many posters were torn down within hours — making surviving copies rare and prized.
🎨 3. Votes for Women – Early 20th Century UK & USA
- The WSPU and NUWSS were branding geniuses
- Bold colours (purple, white, green), clear messaging, and instantly recognisable iconography
- Used on placards, sashes, and shopfront windows
💜 “Deeds Not Words” wasn’t just a slogan. It was a publishing empire.
☭ 4. Anti-Fascist & Labour Art – 1930s–1940s
- The Spanish Civil War, WWII resistance, and workers’ movements all used visuals to rally support
- Images were often stark: clenched fists, broken chains, looming silhouettes
- Many were created in exile, by refugees and student printers
🧵 Resistance often meant running a press in your attic while being hunted by secret police.
✊ 5. 1960s–1980s: Revolution Gets Psychedelic
- Civil Rights, Vietnam, feminist, and queer movements explode with colourful, collage-heavy posters
- DIY aesthetic = high impact and low cost
- Famous poster artists like Emory Douglas (Black Panther Party) and Sister Corita Kent created work that lives on walls — and in museums
🌈 Pride placards, student protest posters, and even punk gig flyers all shared visual DNA.
🪧 6. Modern Protest: Digital Meets Handdrawn
- From BLM marches to climate strikes, handmade signs still rule
- Typography trends from protest posters have shaped online activist aesthetics
- Banksy, Shepard Fairey (Hope poster), and Instagram illustrators continue the tradition
📸 Posters today are made to go viral — but still look excellent on cardboard.
🖼️ Where to See the Originals
- 🖼️ People’s History Museum, Manchester – Home to the UK’s largest collection of political posters
- 🖼️ Victoria and Albert Museum, London – Iconic suffragette prints and political art
- 🖼️ International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam – Posters from over 100 countries
- 🖼️ Center for the Study of Political Graphics, Los Angeles – Radical art from across the globe
🛍️ Poster Perfect: Guild Merch Drop
Create or collect with our new “Protest in Print” collection:
- historic protest posters (choose your era)
- “Glue. March. Repeat.” T-shirts
📚 Want to Know More?
- Protest! A History of Social and Political Protest Graphics by Liz McQuiston
- Women’s Suffrage Posters (British Library Collection)
- Center for the Study of Political Graphics
- Graphic Agitation by Liz McQuiston (again — she’s the queen of protest poster history)
💬 Poster Challenge: #GuildPosterParade
Design your own protest poster — vintage or modern, serious or satirical — and share it with #GuildPosterParade. Tag @TimeTravellersGuild and we’ll include a digital gallery of your creations in our May 31 wrap-up!
