Vintage Poster Archives
Now Let's All Buy Bonds 1943 | US Treasury WW2
Now Let's All Buy Bonds 1943 | US Treasury WW2
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A 48-star American flag fills the frame, billowing against a sky of churning orange and red. The clouds are heavy and turbulent, not a peaceful sunset but something urgent. At the base, bold block letters read 'LET'S ALL BUY BONDS,' the word 'ALL' enlarged and italicised for emphasis. To the left, 'NOW' sits in cream italic script with a yellow underline. The gold eagle finial at the pole's peak separates itself from the dark cloud mass behind it.
Designed by Garry Orr and issued as Official U.S. Treasury Poster SBD-236, this design belongs to the sequence of home-front bond campaigns that ran throughout the Second World War. Between 1941 and 1945 the Treasury conducted eight war loan drives, raising more than 185 billion dollars from 85 million Americans. Orr's composition asked viewers to connect the act of purchasing a bond directly to the flag: financial participation rendered as national survival. A Korean War reissue of the same Orr composition later appeared with the text altered to 'Defense Bonds,' confirming the Treasury's continued confidence in the design into the 1950s.
The 48-star flag anchors the poster in the period before Alaska and Hawaii achieved statehood in 1959. The realist illustrative approach, with its painterly cloud work and close attention to fabric texture, reflects the style of commercial American illustration that the Treasury and Office of War Information favoured throughout the war years.
Reproduced on 200gsm Enhanced Matte Fine Art Paper using pigment-based archival inks. The design is from 1943; the print is freshly produced. Suited to anyone drawn to the home-front visual record of the Second World War, American wartime graphic design, or the history of government communication.
