This was the first poster I ever made. I’d done flyers and newspaper art and poster designs that I kept for myself. This was an actual poster. I was teaching myself to screen print. I’d saved enough money to order some supplies that I’d idntified (from a book) as being the essentials. I had come across the quote somewhere and fallen in love with it. Then I couldn’t figure out where I had seen it (there was no Google in the mid-1970s).

Woody might have appreciated this part. I travelled mostly by hitch-hiking in those days (85% hiking to 15% hitching as some of you will know). Whenever I came into a town I’d stop in the local bookstore and go through any books that might have been the source of the quote. Finally I found it in a store in Exeter, New Hampshire. Not having much money to boast of, I copied the quote out of “Bound for Glory,” a collection of Woody’s writings and drawings. It was from a rap he gave on the radio. He wanted the listeners to call the station and ask that his 15 minute weekly radio program be extended to half an hour.
I started work on the poster soon after moving to Minnesota that fall (1976). Silk-screening was (like the Internet) much more basic back then. I cut the letters by hand in a laquer-based film, peeling off the areas that I had cut from the plastic backing. This film was then adhered to the fabric on the screen with a couple of rags (and highly toxic laquer thinner). If too much or too little thinner or pressure was applied, the screen would be ruined and at least that part of the artwork would need to be redone. I was convinced that no one would want to buy a poster with that many words on it, but the quote seemed to capture what I wanted to do with my life. This poster taught me that different posters serve different functions in people’s lives: it was my (and later Northland’s) best seller for years. At the time, though, I destroyed the stencils when I was done so I could re-use the films. Before long it became clear that folks liked the poster and the run that I had printed would need replenishing. So I ended up cutting all of the art and lettering again and adhering it to screens again! When those ran out I got wise went to a printshop to have them offset (printing-press) printing.

Later we were contacted by the Woody Guthrie Foundation and worked out permission to use the quote (and supply them with posters). We didn’t know about permissions. The Foundation (www.woodyguthrie.org) watches over Woody’s legacy and promotes his work. The poster has been all over the world several times over. It does not feature a stunning visual image. I think it works because it is a simple, uncluttered design that does not get in the way of the words.

Ricardo

“I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim or too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard travelling. I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work. And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you. I could hire out to the other side, the big money side, and get several dollars every week just to quit singing my own kind of songs and to sing the kind that knock you down still farther and the ones that poke fun at you even more and the ones that make you think that you’ve not got any sense at all. But I decided a long time ago that I’d starve to death before I’d sing any such songs as that. The radio waves and your movies and your jukeboxes and your songbooks are already loaded down and running over with such no good songs as that anyhow.”
- Woody Guthrie.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 19th, 2006 @ 3:27 pm on the category Music, Posters.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.