Keep calm and…is the worldwide slogan. I received the notebook as a gift with the cover slogan from my student Draja who spends sometimes her free time in London and who inspired me to find more about it.
The slogan Keep Calm knows the whole world. We see it at the bus stops, on the shopping bags of customers or on T-shirts of our friends or on the mugs of our parents etc. How many people know the real meaning and its origin?
First it was a motivational poster proposed by the British government just before the outbreak of World War II. The aim was to raise the morale of the British sociaty in the places where they were expected aircraft strikes. It referred mainly to the larger cities that may have been affected and they finally were. The poster was printed in 2.5 mil. copies, though the copies were not published. Its existence is almost uknown. Everything has changed since 2000 – that can be described as a year of rediscovery of „keep calm“.
The discoverer of the poster was Stuart Manley from Barter Books. Going through old books, he bought at auction, while the boxes hit the Keep Calm and Carry on. He framed several of them and hung up the store. It attracted many customers. For that reason Manley began to produce and sell copies. Later this slogan was used by many other companies for a wide range of products and has become popular worldwide.