Saturday, October 20, 2012

Camouflage Poster | Curt Wery



Above One of ninety posters designed by graphic design students at the University of Northern Iowa, to advertise an upcoming talk on WWI ship camouflage by RISD scholar Claudia Covert. This is one of three posters designed by Curt Wery. Copyright © 2012 by the designer. All rights reserved.

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Anon, “Admiralty’s Humor” in the Breckenridge News (Cloverport KY), May 14, 1919, p. 7.

An old sea captain wrote to the [British Admiralty] complaining, more in sorrow than in anger, of the way in which his ship had been dazzle-painted: "First you make me look like a parrot, and then you make me look like a haystack, and I don’t want to look like either." He got back the official reply: "We don’t want you to look like either a parrot or a haystack, but we do want you to look as if your stern was where your head ought to be."

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Mingo White (a former Alabama slave, paraphrased from an interview by Levi D. Shelby, Jr., in 1937 as part of the Federal Writers Project, now in the Library of Congress)—

[Confederate President] Jeff Davis was as smart a man as you ever want to see. During the [American Civil] war he sheered his horse in such a way that he looked like he was going one way when he'd be going the other.