Vintage Poster Archives
Loose Talk Can Cost Lives 1942 | Dohanos WW2 Poster
Loose Talk Can Cost Lives 1942 | Dohanos WW2 Poster
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A cargo ship tilts steeply upward, bow rising into a pale blue sky as the stern slips beneath a calm teal sea. Three lifeboats carry survivors across the water below; the red waterline paint of the hull is exposed as the angle sharpens. Two torn cream banner strips carry the slogan in heavy condensed black type: LOOSE TALK / CAN COST LIVES. No enemy agent. No melodrama. Just consequence, illustrated in Stevan Dohanos's direct, realist hand.
This is one of ten posters in the 1942 series commissioned by the British and American Ambulance Corps, Inc., distributed across the United States in the interest of national defense and as a means of raising funds for ambulances. Each poster was assigned to a different American commercial illustrator. Dohanos, then already a fixture of Saturday Evening Post covers, took the naval scenario: a ship already going down, the moment after the information reached the wrong ear. The composition works as argument as much as illustration, making the cost of careless talk visible in a single image.
Stevan Dohanos (1907–1994) trained at the Cleveland School of Art and spent his career as one of America's most prolific illustrators, producing more than 125 Saturday Evening Post covers and designs for 25 US postage stamps. His wartime poster work holds permanent places in the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Library of Congress. The 'Loose Talk Can Cost Lives' sinking ship remains among the most historically specific of the home-front communication series.
Reproduced on 200gsm Enhanced Matte Fine Art Paper using pigment-based archival inks. The design is the 1942 Dohanos original; each print is produced to order, on natural white stock with no optical brighteners. A considered choice for anyone with an interest in WW2 graphic history, American social realist illustration, or the design of wartime public communication.
