ENGLAND GOLF(2 coursesi TENNIS BOATINC BATHING DN APPLICATION TO TOWN CLERK ANV L N E R E NQUIRY OFFICE ' AUSTIN COO P'ER FRANK H. MASON result of this transportation that matters to the traveller and forthat purpose the poster is, indeed invaluable. It should indicate pleasant, cheerful, “restful” life—but life it should be—in an atmosphere of light. I remembered that when, some few years back, I discussed railway posters with a friend, he said “just fancy the Station without them, showing us only the grey smokish bricks!” Since then I have become kind to any railway poster, although I still believe that they should never be mere wall coverings, but powerful appeals on behalf of nature’s splendours. Royal Academicians have been called in and been given a free hand. The result has been in only too many cases “super wall coverings”, and very seldom strong advertising matter. This attempt to secure effective posters which followed the commissioning by the L. N.E.R. of a poster by Frank Brangwyn,—this poster, by the way, is an exception to the rule, being a powerful piece ofpromotion matter—was the best vindication of the commercial artist. It became clear that there must be a definit call to action, a real challenge, behind the subject—which is lacking unless the artist is capable of making a beautiful picture, which possesses the additional qualities for making an active poster. It was while I was viewing at the L.N.E.R. ad* vertising offices, the posters issuedbythat Company (and it so happened thatI viewed these after having inspected over a hundred from other railways) that it came to me what arailway poster should really be. There is just one more thing that I strongly feit. It is the great superiority of flat colours to any stippled or shaded scenery. As posters are primarily advertisements which must arrest the attention of the public, those used by the L.N.E.R. and by the other Companies to a smaller extent, are constructed of large masses of flat colour and all stippling and modelling is eliminated. The flat colour poster refuses to melt itself away, it gets to the eye, and teils its message. How very true this is when one notices how the simple compositions of a Tom Purvis, a Fred Taylor, a Newbould, stand out among a multitude of others more elaborate but far less convincing. 13