Posters on the Move

In a previous Picture This post, Poster Parade: Free to Use-and Animate!, we introduced an exciting collaboration with New York City’s Poster House, the first museum dedicated to the design and history of posters. The Library of Congress provided a selection of Free to Use and Re-Use posters from our extensive, international collections for a design contest. Designers, amateur and professional alike, created whimsical and impressive animations of some of our favorite posters, and today we will the share some of the winning designs! (Links to the animations are below each poster.)

This charming mid-century travel poster got new life through animation. See the Windy City in action!

View the animation of this poster by one of the winners on the Poster House Facebook account.

This poster advertised the efforts of the Rural Electrification Administration to bring electric power into the homes of rural Americans in the 1930s. The witty animation sheds new light on the subject!

View the animation of this poster by one of the winners on the Poster House Facebook account.

The animation of an 1896 poster from the earliest days of the modern motion picture industry provides a sneak peek into the future with its take on 3-D movies.

View the animation of this poster by one of the winners on the Poster House Facebook account.

Congratulations and many thanks to all the people who participated in the contest and gave us a new take on some of our favorite posters!

Learn More:

• The poster collection in the Prints & Photographs Division includes more than 100,000 posters from all over the world. Explore the “Free to Use and Re-Use” set of posters suggested to designers entering the contest, who were also free to select from other posters available online from our poster collections. Our largest rights-free poster categories are Performing Arts Posters, World War I Posters, and WPA Posters.
• View the Poster House Web site and information about the animation challenge when it was launched.
• Explore the winning animations in the videos section of the Poster House Facebook account. They are also included in the Poster House Instagram.