Posters
Why are posters powerful sources? Posters can influence by appealing to emotions. Posters offer a means to communicate in ways that text does not. Posters use colors, images that are used to evoke responses for specific goals, to motivate people to act, to think a certain way. Consider the poster “Look Behind the Mask, Communism is Death.” While the text is important and helps to lead the viewer, the black background and the juxtaposition of Stalin with a skull stirs the imagination and reinforces the message that Communist is death far more than the text. Consider also the Soviet poster, “Glory to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Слава КПСС). In the midst of the Space Race and the Cold War, the image of the heroic Soviet cosmonauts (astronauts) and the rockets above them elicit images of the power and technology of the USSR as it reaches to the stars.
