British Aviation Posters: Art, Design and Flight

From Futurism and Modernism to Art Deco and Surrealism, aviation was from its earliest days inextricably linked with revolutionary new ways of seeing the world. Focusing on the golden age of British civil aviation, British Aviation Posters shows how art and design were applied with great creativity and style to develop and promote aviation in the UK and beyond.

The story begins with the air shows and exhibitions of the early pioneers, through the start of regular passenger flights in the 1920s and the creation of Imperial Airways as the UK national carrier in 1924. By the 1930s passenger routes across the world were being developed and promoted with increasingly sophisticated visual publicity to persuade the British public to be more ‘air minded’ in a turbulent period of political and social upheaval. The New Elizabethan Age took UK aviation in new directions in the 1950s with BOAC and BEA ushering in the development of jet airliners and a growing consumer market that needed to be serviced by new forms of marketing and promotion.

Drawing on British Airways’ premier poster collection and featuring the work of such distinguished designers as Theyre Lee-Elliott, Ben Nicholson, Edward McKnight Kauffer, F.H.K. Henrion, Gabby Schreiber, Robin Day, Abram Games, Hugh Casson and Frank Wootton, British Aviation Posters offers a definitive account of this seminal period in modern UK design history as Oliver Green and Scott Anthony show how posters, publicity and graphic design were used to express the speed, progress and sheer excitement of flight.