Keep Calm and Carry On

1939Image macro / phrasal templateclassic

Also known as: KCACO · Keep Calm

Keep Calm and Carry On is a 1939 British Ministry of Information poster featuring white text beneath a Tudor Crown on red, rediscovered in 2000 and spawning the ubiquitous "Keep Calm and X" phrasal template meme.

Keep Calm and Carry On is a British World War II-era motivational poster that became one of the internet's most widely remixed image templates after being rediscovered in a bookshop in 2000. Originally designed by the Ministry of Information in 1939, the poster's simple format of white text beneath a Tudor Crown on a red background spawned thousands of parody versions online, turning "Keep Calm and X" into a phrasal template used across merchandise, social media, and image generators worldwide.

poster memeswwii origin memeshistorical photo memest shirt origin memesbritish memes

TL;DR

Keep Calm and Carry On is a British World War II-era motivational poster that became one of the internet's most widely remixed image templates after being rediscovered in a bookshop in 2000.

Overview

The meme uses a distinctive visual format: bold sans-serif white text stacked beneath a simple crown icon, set against a solid-color background (originally red). The template follows a rigid structure where the top line reads "Keep Calm and..." followed by a second line completing the phrase. Variations replace both the crown and the text entirely, creating an endlessly adaptable format for jokes, workplace humor, fandom references, and political commentary.

What makes the design so effective as a meme template is its simplicity. The crown, the centered text, and the bold color background are instantly recognizable even when the words change completely4. The public domain status of the original design means anyone can reproduce and modify it without legal restriction1.

The British Ministry of Information commissioned the Keep Calm and Carry On poster between 27 June and 6 July 19395. It was one of three "Home Publicity" posters designed to boost civilian morale if Germany invaded Britain. The other two read "Your Courage, Your Cheerfulness, Your Resolution Will Bring Us Victory" and "Freedom Is in Peril / Defend It With All Your Might"4.

A civil servant named A. P. Waterfield contributed to the slogan development, and Ernest Wallcousins was the artist who created the poster designs5. The lettering was likely hand-drawn by Wallcousins in a style similar to Gill Sans and Johnston typefaces5. Almost 2.5 million copies were printed between 23 August and 3 September 1939, but unlike the other two posters, Keep Calm was held in "cold storage" for use only after serious air raids5. The land invasion never came, and most copies were pulped as part of Britain's Paper Salvage campaign by April 19405.

The poster sat in near-total obscurity for six decades. In 2000, Stuart and Mary Manley, owners of Barter Books in Alnwick, England, found an original copy folded at the bottom of a box of old books they'd purchased at auction1. Not knowing what they had, the couple framed it and hung it in their shop. Customers loved it, and the Manleys began selling reproductions. By March 2009, they had sold over 40,000 copies4.

Origin & Background

Platform
Barter Books shop (rediscovery), KeepCalmAndCarryOn.com / Threadless (online spread)
Key People
Ernest Wallcousins, A. P. Waterfield, Stuart Manley and Mary Manley
Date
1939 (original poster), 2007-2009 (internet meme)
Year
1939

The British Ministry of Information commissioned the Keep Calm and Carry On poster between 27 June and 6 July 1939. It was one of three "Home Publicity" posters designed to boost civilian morale if Germany invaded Britain. The other two read "Your Courage, Your Cheerfulness, Your Resolution Will Bring Us Victory" and "Freedom Is in Peril / Defend It With All Your Might".

A civil servant named A. P. Waterfield contributed to the slogan development, and Ernest Wallcousins was the artist who created the poster designs. The lettering was likely hand-drawn by Wallcousins in a style similar to Gill Sans and Johnston typefaces. Almost 2.5 million copies were printed between 23 August and 3 September 1939, but unlike the other two posters, Keep Calm was held in "cold storage" for use only after serious air raids. The land invasion never came, and most copies were pulped as part of Britain's Paper Salvage campaign by April 1940.

The poster sat in near-total obscurity for six decades. In 2000, Stuart and Mary Manley, owners of Barter Books in Alnwick, England, found an original copy folded at the bottom of a box of old books they'd purchased at auction. Not knowing what they had, the couple framed it and hung it in their shop. Customers loved it, and the Manleys began selling reproductions. By March 2009, they had sold over 40,000 copies.

How It Spread

The poster's jump from bookshop curiosity to internet fixture happened in stages. In February 2007, Mark Coop, a British freelance television production manager, registered the domain KeepCalmAndCarryOn.com and began selling the slogan on T-shirts, cuff links, and duffel bags. Around the same time, Victoria Smith, a San Francisco-based design blogger, bought one of the Barter Books prints secondhand and started producing her own silk-screen color variations on Etsy.

In November 2008, crowdsourced T-shirt company Threadless released the first known spoof design: an upside-down crown with the text "Now Panic and Freak Out". This marked the moment the poster shifted from nostalgic reproduction to remixable meme template.

The 2008-2009 global financial crisis supercharged the poster's spread. The Guardian and The Independent both published articles about the slogan's new relevance to people dealing with economic anxiety. Orders flooded in from workers at American financial firms and advertising agencies. Product designer Matt Jones, self-described as being "in a grumpy mood," read one of these articles and sketched his own response: "Get Excited and Make Things" under a crown made of wrenches. His design became a web hit and was picked up by Welsh clothing brand Howies and print retailer 20x200.com.

In April 2009, the Keep Calm-o-matic image generator launched, letting anyone create custom posters by filling in the blank. This tool blew the format wide open. The New York Times Magazine investigated the poster's popularity that July, noting the "legion" of online and offline iterations including "Keep Calm and Have a Cupcake," "Don't Panic and Fake a British Accent," and "Keep Spending and Carry On Shopping".

By 2010, Dr. Rebecca Lewis (formerly Bex Lewis), whose PhD thesis at the University of Winchester covered the original WWII poster series, launched a blog to track every mention and derivative she could find. The Welsh rock band Stereophonics named their seventh album Keep Calm and Carry On in November 2009. French website Geekiz compiled 85 variations in May 2010. Etsy listings featuring the phrase and its derivatives exceeded 10,000 items. British loyalty card Nectar even ran an ad campaign punning on the slogan: "Keep Calm and Carry One".

In February 2012, approximately 15 original copies surfaced when the daughter of an ex-Royal Observer Corps member brought them to the BBC television show Antiques Roadshow, confirming that more than just the Barter Books copy had survived.

Platforms

RedditTwitterTikTokDiscordInstagram

Timeline

2009-06

Meme format emerges

2010-01

Gains traction in internet circles

2011-01

Reaches peak popularity

2012-01-01

Brands and companies started using Keep Calm and Carry On in marketing

2014-01-01

Keep Calm and Carry On entered the broader pop culture conversation

2024-01

Current status in meme culture

View on Google Trends

How to Use This Meme

The Keep Calm format follows a strict visual template:

1

Pick a solid background color (the original uses Pantone 485 red, but any bold color works)

2

Place a crown or substitute icon at the top center

3

Write "KEEP CALM AND" on the first line in white sans-serif capitals

4

Complete the phrase on the second line with your chosen action or joke

5

Center all text and maintain the poster's tall, narrow proportions

Create Your Own

Cultural Impact

The poster tapped into what Mary Manley described as "nostalgia for a certain British character, an outlook". That nostalgia turned out to be globally marketable. "Germany's really big on it, oddly enough," noted merchandise seller Mark Coop.

But the poster's cultural story is more complicated than a straightforward tale of wartime British resolve. As Dr. Rebecca Lewis pointed out, "People talk about it, Americans in particular I'm afraid, being the poster that kept the British going through the war". In reality, almost no one saw it during wartime. The few similar posters that were displayed at the time actually drew criticism for their "condescending, authoritarian tone," and the government abandoned the stark look in favor of "a lot more colorful and a lot more people-focused" designs.

Design historian Susannah Walker called the original poster campaign "a resounding failure," reflecting a misjudgement by upper-class civil servants of the mood of the people. Mass Observation analysis of the public response was overwhelmingly negative, with some interpreting the "Your Courage" companion poster as implying common people would suffer for the benefit of the upper classes.

The poster's influence extended into music when Stereophonics used it as an album title in 2009. Flickr hosted a community pool of nearly 500 design variations. Collections of parodies were featured on BuzzFeed and other viral content sites. The meme also made a mark on academic study, with Lewis's blog tracking hundreds of derivatives across media and commerce.

Relations among the various sellers were not particularly friendly. The New York Times reported that each complained of copycats selling low-quality versions.

Fun Facts

The original posters were printed in 11 different sizes, from small 15x10 inch prints up to massive 48-sheet billboard versions.

A photograph discovered in 2016 shows the poster on the wall of a government laboratory in Bedfordshire, proving at least some unauthorized display did occur during the war.

An example of the poster appears in a drawing of a London Underground station by Floyd MacMillan Davis, published in Life magazine in 1944.

The design is in the public domain because it was created by a UK government body, meaning anyone can legally reproduce and modify it without permission.

Printing of the original posters began on 23 August 1939, the same day Nazi Germany and the USSR signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

Derivatives & Variations

Community variations and adaptations

A variation of Keep Calm and Carry On

(2009)

Platform-specific versions

A variation of Keep Calm and Carry On

(2009)

Subculture-specific remixes

A variation of Keep Calm and Carry On

(2009)

Frequently Asked Questions

Keep Calm and Carry On

1939Image macro / phrasal templateclassic

Also known as: KCACO · Keep Calm

Keep Calm and Carry On is a 1939 British Ministry of Information poster featuring white text beneath a Tudor Crown on red, rediscovered in 2000 and spawning the ubiquitous "Keep Calm and X" phrasal template meme.

Keep Calm and Carry On is a British World War II-era motivational poster that became one of the internet's most widely remixed image templates after being rediscovered in a bookshop in 2000. Originally designed by the Ministry of Information in 1939, the poster's simple format of white text beneath a Tudor Crown on a red background spawned thousands of parody versions online, turning "Keep Calm and X" into a phrasal template used across merchandise, social media, and image generators worldwide.

poster memes wwii origin memes historical photo memes t shirt origin memes british memes

TL;DR

Keep Calm and Carry On is a British World War II-era motivational poster that became one of the internet's most widely remixed image templates after being rediscovered in a bookshop in 2000.

Overview

The meme uses a distinctive visual format: bold sans-serif white text stacked beneath a simple crown icon, set against a solid-color background (originally red). The template follows a rigid structure where the top line reads "Keep Calm and..." followed by a second line completing the phrase. Variations replace both the crown and the text entirely, creating an endlessly adaptable format for jokes, workplace humor, fandom references, and political commentary.

What makes the design so effective as a meme template is its simplicity. The crown, the centered text, and the bold color background are instantly recognizable even when the words change completely. The public domain status of the original design means anyone can reproduce and modify it without legal restriction.

The British Ministry of Information commissioned the Keep Calm and Carry On poster between 27 June and 6 July 1939. It was one of three "Home Publicity" posters designed to boost civilian morale if Germany invaded Britain. The other two read "Your Courage, Your Cheerfulness, Your Resolution Will Bring Us Victory" and "Freedom Is in Peril / Defend It With All Your Might".

A civil servant named A. P. Waterfield contributed to the slogan development, and Ernest Wallcousins was the artist who created the poster designs. The lettering was likely hand-drawn by Wallcousins in a style similar to Gill Sans and Johnston typefaces. Almost 2.5 million copies were printed between 23 August and 3 September 1939, but unlike the other two posters, Keep Calm was held in "cold storage" for use only after serious air raids. The land invasion never came, and most copies were pulped as part of Britain's Paper Salvage campaign by April 1940.

The poster sat in near-total obscurity for six decades. In 2000, Stuart and Mary Manley, owners of Barter Books in Alnwick, England, found an original copy folded at the bottom of a box of old books they'd purchased at auction. Not knowing what they had, the couple framed it and hung it in their shop. Customers loved it, and the Manleys began selling reproductions. By March 2009, they had sold over 40,000 copies.

Origin & Background

Platform
Barter Books shop (rediscovery), KeepCalmAndCarryOn.com / Threadless (online spread)
Key People
Ernest Wallcousins, A. P. Waterfield, Stuart Manley and Mary Manley
Date
1939 (original poster), 2007-2009 (internet meme)
Year
1939

The British Ministry of Information commissioned the Keep Calm and Carry On poster between 27 June and 6 July 1939. It was one of three "Home Publicity" posters designed to boost civilian morale if Germany invaded Britain. The other two read "Your Courage, Your Cheerfulness, Your Resolution Will Bring Us Victory" and "Freedom Is in Peril / Defend It With All Your Might".

A civil servant named A. P. Waterfield contributed to the slogan development, and Ernest Wallcousins was the artist who created the poster designs. The lettering was likely hand-drawn by Wallcousins in a style similar to Gill Sans and Johnston typefaces. Almost 2.5 million copies were printed between 23 August and 3 September 1939, but unlike the other two posters, Keep Calm was held in "cold storage" for use only after serious air raids. The land invasion never came, and most copies were pulped as part of Britain's Paper Salvage campaign by April 1940.

The poster sat in near-total obscurity for six decades. In 2000, Stuart and Mary Manley, owners of Barter Books in Alnwick, England, found an original copy folded at the bottom of a box of old books they'd purchased at auction. Not knowing what they had, the couple framed it and hung it in their shop. Customers loved it, and the Manleys began selling reproductions. By March 2009, they had sold over 40,000 copies.

How It Spread

The poster's jump from bookshop curiosity to internet fixture happened in stages. In February 2007, Mark Coop, a British freelance television production manager, registered the domain KeepCalmAndCarryOn.com and began selling the slogan on T-shirts, cuff links, and duffel bags. Around the same time, Victoria Smith, a San Francisco-based design blogger, bought one of the Barter Books prints secondhand and started producing her own silk-screen color variations on Etsy.

In November 2008, crowdsourced T-shirt company Threadless released the first known spoof design: an upside-down crown with the text "Now Panic and Freak Out". This marked the moment the poster shifted from nostalgic reproduction to remixable meme template.

The 2008-2009 global financial crisis supercharged the poster's spread. The Guardian and The Independent both published articles about the slogan's new relevance to people dealing with economic anxiety. Orders flooded in from workers at American financial firms and advertising agencies. Product designer Matt Jones, self-described as being "in a grumpy mood," read one of these articles and sketched his own response: "Get Excited and Make Things" under a crown made of wrenches. His design became a web hit and was picked up by Welsh clothing brand Howies and print retailer 20x200.com.

In April 2009, the Keep Calm-o-matic image generator launched, letting anyone create custom posters by filling in the blank. This tool blew the format wide open. The New York Times Magazine investigated the poster's popularity that July, noting the "legion" of online and offline iterations including "Keep Calm and Have a Cupcake," "Don't Panic and Fake a British Accent," and "Keep Spending and Carry On Shopping".

By 2010, Dr. Rebecca Lewis (formerly Bex Lewis), whose PhD thesis at the University of Winchester covered the original WWII poster series, launched a blog to track every mention and derivative she could find. The Welsh rock band Stereophonics named their seventh album Keep Calm and Carry On in November 2009. French website Geekiz compiled 85 variations in May 2010. Etsy listings featuring the phrase and its derivatives exceeded 10,000 items. British loyalty card Nectar even ran an ad campaign punning on the slogan: "Keep Calm and Carry One".

In February 2012, approximately 15 original copies surfaced when the daughter of an ex-Royal Observer Corps member brought them to the BBC television show Antiques Roadshow, confirming that more than just the Barter Books copy had survived.

Platforms

RedditTwitterTikTokDiscordInstagram

Timeline

2009-06

Meme format emerges

2010-01

Gains traction in internet circles

2011-01

Reaches peak popularity

2012-01-01

Brands and companies started using Keep Calm and Carry On in marketing

2014-01-01

Keep Calm and Carry On entered the broader pop culture conversation

2024-01

Current status in meme culture

View on Google Trends

How to Use This Meme

The Keep Calm format follows a strict visual template:

1

Pick a solid background color (the original uses Pantone 485 red, but any bold color works)

2

Place a crown or substitute icon at the top center

3

Write "KEEP CALM AND" on the first line in white sans-serif capitals

4

Complete the phrase on the second line with your chosen action or joke

5

Center all text and maintain the poster's tall, narrow proportions

Create Your Own

Cultural Impact

The poster tapped into what Mary Manley described as "nostalgia for a certain British character, an outlook". That nostalgia turned out to be globally marketable. "Germany's really big on it, oddly enough," noted merchandise seller Mark Coop.

But the poster's cultural story is more complicated than a straightforward tale of wartime British resolve. As Dr. Rebecca Lewis pointed out, "People talk about it, Americans in particular I'm afraid, being the poster that kept the British going through the war". In reality, almost no one saw it during wartime. The few similar posters that were displayed at the time actually drew criticism for their "condescending, authoritarian tone," and the government abandoned the stark look in favor of "a lot more colorful and a lot more people-focused" designs.

Design historian Susannah Walker called the original poster campaign "a resounding failure," reflecting a misjudgement by upper-class civil servants of the mood of the people. Mass Observation analysis of the public response was overwhelmingly negative, with some interpreting the "Your Courage" companion poster as implying common people would suffer for the benefit of the upper classes.

The poster's influence extended into music when Stereophonics used it as an album title in 2009. Flickr hosted a community pool of nearly 500 design variations. Collections of parodies were featured on BuzzFeed and other viral content sites. The meme also made a mark on academic study, with Lewis's blog tracking hundreds of derivatives across media and commerce.

Relations among the various sellers were not particularly friendly. The New York Times reported that each complained of copycats selling low-quality versions.

Fun Facts

The original posters were printed in 11 different sizes, from small 15x10 inch prints up to massive 48-sheet billboard versions.

A photograph discovered in 2016 shows the poster on the wall of a government laboratory in Bedfordshire, proving at least some unauthorized display did occur during the war.

An example of the poster appears in a drawing of a London Underground station by Floyd MacMillan Davis, published in Life magazine in 1944.

The design is in the public domain because it was created by a UK government body, meaning anyone can legally reproduce and modify it without permission.

Printing of the original posters began on 23 August 1939, the same day Nazi Germany and the USSR signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

Derivatives & Variations

Community variations and adaptations

A variation of Keep Calm and Carry On

(2009)

Platform-specific versions

A variation of Keep Calm and Carry On

(2009)

Subculture-specific remixes

A variation of Keep Calm and Carry On

(2009)

Frequently Asked Questions