Vintage Poster Archives
We Can Do It 1943 | J. Howard Miller WW2 Poster
We Can Do It 1943 | J. Howard Miller WW2 Poster
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A female factory worker faces the viewer three-quarters on, right arm raised in a firm bicep flex, cobalt blue work shirt rolled at the sleeve, a red polka-dot bandana tied above her forehead, and a Westinghouse employee badge pinned to her collar lapel. Behind her, a saturated cadmium yellow field fills the frame. Above, a navy blue speech-bubble panel carries 'We Can Do It!' in bold white condensed lettering. The Westinghouse 'W' logo and committee name run along the foot of the sheet. The notation 'POST FEB. 15 TO FEB. 28' fixes the poster's exact two-week display window at the bottom left.
Commissioned by the Westinghouse War Production Co-Ordinating Committee in 1942 and displayed inside Westinghouse factories in East Pittsburgh and the Midwest during February 1943, this is one of more than 42 morale posters produced by Pittsburgh graphic artist J. Howard Miller (1898–1985) for the company's wartime labour-management programme. Fewer than 1,800 copies were printed. The poster was strictly internal, posted for two weeks, then replaced by the next in the series, and remained largely unseen until its rediscovery in the early 1980s. Since then it has appeared on the cover of Smithsonian magazine, been issued as a US Postal Service stamp, and is held as one of the ten most-requested images at the National Archives and Records Administration.
The composition works through economy: three planes of saturated colour, one figure, one gesture, four words. The raised arm against the yellow ground is among the most direct graphic statements of the WW2 home-front era, produced by a freelance illustrator whose broader career in commercial advertising art in Pittsburgh remained largely unknown until recent scholarship by Professor James J. Kimble of Seton Hall University brought Miller's biography to light in 2022.
Reproduced here as a Giclée archival print on 200gsm Enhanced Matte Fine Art Paper, faithful to the flat graphic palette of the original offset lithograph. The navy, cobalt, and yellow hold well across all standard sizes.
