Insull transit posters

Samuel Insull, a Brit who came to the U.S. to work for Thomas Edison, became a major shareholder in the Chicago utilities and transit sectors by the 1920s. J.J. Sedelmaier describes Insull's campaign promote to the transit industry:

Chicago’s transit lines had been doing advertising and even some poster designs since the 1910s, but there was no consistent graphic approach or what we now know to be “branding” in the direction of the marketing. This all changed once Insull took hold of the Elevated Rapid Transit System and the associated interurban lines. He soon assigned the poster project to the railroads’ president, Britton I. Budd, who later brought people like the North Shore Line’s Publicity Manager Luke Grant and Commercial Department Head John J. Moran, into the fold.

The design of the posters covered a wide range of styles. From the figurative work of artists like Willard Frederic Elmes and the young Oscar Rabe Hanson to the flat graphic interpretations of Ervine Metzl, many of the works produced were as strong and bold as anything being created simultaneously in the U.K. or Germany. The series not only utilized the talents of professional artists like Leslie Ragan, Elmes and Metzl, but also was a proving ground for newcomers like Hanson, and other art school students like Clara Fahrenbach and Wallace Swanson.

Sedelmaier's piece includes a treasure trove of poster images. The poster campaign ended in 1930 and, reports Sedelmaier, the posters faded from the forefront until Dave Garlter of Poster Plus in Chicago came across a bunch of unused posters 45 years later. He mounted and exhibited the posters and renewed interest in the Insull transit posters followed. 

(via Salon)