The examples you point to are (presumably based on their quality and regularity, provability is hard in specific cases here) signs made by professional letterers and signmakers — an industry that was much more common and pervasive in the 30s, 40s, and 50s than today. Large and well-organized protests in this time period would employ or acquire via professional volunteers signage like the ones you use as examples. (A modern equivalent might be having a WordPress website set up for your protest: It's a common professional skill and not as expensive or difficult to acquire as you might think.)

(If your question is more of a technical one: These signs weren't all individually hand-lettered. A professional lettering artist makes one copy, then the artwork is photographed and turned into a plate for silkscreening or lithography.)

Signage was seen as part of branding a cause, and this professional approach intersected well with the Madison-Avenue advertising culture of the day. In addition to hand-lettered signage like your examples, there are famous examples of professionally printed protest signs such as the "I Am a Man" signs (from a Memphis custodian protest) and Malcolm X rallies around various causes. Don't underestimate the resources available to well-organized events.

Starting in the 60s-70s and the counter-culture movement in America, signage even at larger events become much more home-grown and improvised. You'll see a lot more free expression in anti-Vietnam protest signs in the 70s, for example — and again, this reflects a shift in the culture of expression of the times.

Of course, there has always been a range of home-grown signage alongside professionally-produced signage, these patterns are only generalizations. You can certainly see home-grown signage from mid-century and professionally produced signs today.

Lastly, your question might actually just be one of aesthetics: There's little technical difference between how the signs in your example were produced and how BLM or Westboro Baptist Church signs are made. You may just personally think the lettering is nicer looking when it was done by hand, before computers. And I'd agree with you.

Also: Protest art is a whole field of graphic design history and collection. For more, check out The Art of Protest by T.V. Reed. Artists and designers have always been part of political movements, it's an interesting lens through which to learn some social history.

Hi there!

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So, as a qualifier, this is related to the academic work that I do (social movement theory) but I don’t have specific knowledge about the actual production of signs in the 30s-50s, I’m not a historian, and my focus isn’t on street protests.

That aside, I did some research and do have a few things that are generally related.

Generally, I think that your question concerns the creation of protest art - there’s a long history of socially conscious artists collaborating with social movements. Admittedly, a lot of the focus is on more ‘traditional’ artwork, i.e., the Guerilla Girls posters (group esp. active in the 80s to this day, created posters and art critiquing lack of diversity in NYC art world), or Picasso’s Guernica (‘37, raised awareness re Spanish Civil War), the iconography of the Black Panther Party, and so on.

I’m not aware of much of a body of work on the actual creation of the specific protest signs themselves, but I have seen references to it in general histories (although most of the examples I have are from AIDS activism/ACT UP in the late 20th century, so I’m not sure where to look for the time period you’re concerned with). However, the long-standing connection between the arts world and social movements does suggest that there’s an unusual amount of artistic talent in protest movements, so it does sort of follow that even relatively quotidian protest signs would be excellently lettered as well. Basically, 'good guy graphic designers' is probably not too far off the mark; they were probably part of the movement as well.

For the last image, however, I have a better answer as to why they’re so well done: they actually are professional artists.

Unless I’m completely wrong, that’s from the Disney Strike of 1941. These were strikes over the summer of ‘41 over unionization at Disney (primary source for this is Lisa Johnson’s The Disney Strike of 1941: From the Animator’s Perspective, an excellent brief history of/take on the strike).

At the time, the animators were trying to unionize. The strikes were ‘officially’ set off after “seventeen artists were escorted out of Walt Disney Studios” for trying to unionize. Really, they had been brewing for some time. Disney had just finished Snow White in ‘37. The studio had to massively ramp up production to do so, and shifted to a much more professional/structured system of animation from their old model of ‘a handful of animators working … with … Walt”. Getting the film finished had required an enormous amount of work/sacrifice on the part of the animators, and they didn’t feel that they had been properly compensated. Then, shortly thereafter, World War 2 had broken out, causing general tumult but also tanking the European markets for Pinocchio, Disney’s next film. The company had just massively expanded, and was under immense financial pressure.

The animators wanted recognition: screen credits and IP rights, as well as more creative control over their work. Walt Disney, in turn, tried to regain control over the projects that were growing larger and larger, and attempted to keep control. Part of this entailed suppressing labor organizing on the part of the animators. He created the Disney Federation of Screen Cartoonists, a company union that effectively existed to try and channel/prevent other union organizing that would be more disruptive.

One of the studio’s head animators, Art Babbitt, was initially chosen to lead the company union. However, he found that it was pretty much impossible to get any concessions from Disney (i.e., a 2 dollar raise for the animators) and decided to join up with the pre-existing Screen Cartoonists Guild instead. They gathered an enormous number of their fellow animators (400/560 eligible became card-carrying member) and went to Disney to negotiate. On May 28th, Babbitt and some of his fellow leaders sat down with Disney.

They were promptly fired for ‘union activities’ (they were the seventeen artists mentioned above). Firing workers for unionizing was strictly illegal, as per the Wagner Act/Supreme Court litigation of the mid-late 30’s, yet Disney made it abundantly clear that was why they were fired.

So, their demands not met, the Disney workers went on strike. They fired back and forth competing demands with Disney without making much headway (incidentally, the first representative Disney put in charge was Willie Bioff, a figure in organized crime who was indicted on federal charges of extortion midway through the negotiation, and was a well-known union buster). On July 5th, the US Gov’t sent a negotiator to try and mediate, and did get some of the striking unions to return to work, but had trouble actually making peace.

At this point, the strikers attracted national attention from various newspapers and op-eds, were accused of sympathizing with Communists and being un-American. Eventually, by the end of July, the strike did sort of fizzle to an end: the AFL unions they had been striking with went back to work, there were a few raises and re-hirings, and things eventually returned to normal. They didn’t end up being able to make significant structural change in the company, and many of the strikers were later surreptitiously fired again once things blew over.

However, because they were a massive group of animators/cartoonists, with a lot of time on their hands, they did make some lovely signs!

Source: Johnson, Lisa,  The Disney Strike of 1941: From The Animator’s Perspective, 2008

Hello, while not a "historian" in the typical way I do have a background with graphic design and art history so I figured I would do my best to help out. There are a few reasons why a lot of older signs were designed beautifully. Before what we now know as fonts, there were books consisting of hundreds of pages of different letterforms (type styles) that one could reference, within each of the page of letterforms, there were instructions on how to draw each of the individual letters broken down into different brush strokes and the type of brush that was used to achieve that style. Something I should point out is that sign painting is a craft and a skill, there were/are schools and people dedicated to it's improvements year after year. These artists kept adjusting their style to keep up with the modern times and could reference any material that is out at the time to create new letterforms, like this Speedball Lettering textbook from 1941. https://imgur.com/a/3qH8r

Here is a look at one of the earlier books on sign painting from 1911, while it doesn't have any letterforms, it does have details on the types of tools that are used and solutions to applying letters to one of the preferred mediums of the time: the carriage & wagon. You might notice how it also has helpful tips like "striping, lettering, scrolling & ornamental" and "applying gold leaf" as all of these skills were important to sign painting (and still are). https://archive.org/details/carriagepainting00mair

While there are a few fields a graphic design going on at this time period, there were entire sign shops dedicated to doing only work with brushes and inks as most press printing done at this time period were done with the help of the linotype machine with a very limited selection on type styles and type size as well of other forms of type, but the printing press was not capable of dealing with larger custom pieces 2-3 feet tall. In the documentary released in 2013, Sign Painters, one of the older gentlemen who was part of a sign shop in it's heyday (in the 40's and 50's) said they had 11-13 guys on one floor slinging out showcards left and right.

A showcard is essentially a big poster with as few words on it as possible to get the message across to the reader fast and simple. These could be words such as "1 dozen eggs 25¢!", "Our brisket is the best in town" or, as your photo shows: "W.P.T.B. Prices unfair to labor". It is up to the individual artist and a conversation with their client to figure out what the important words are. After this conversation is had, a show card could probably get done in about 2 or 3 minutes after a quick sketch of the overall layout (which all the showcard painters have mastered because this is their career). The cost of these show cards were considerably lower than that of a typical commercial sign, something that took more planning and execution. Most showcards were done with a limited color pallet, typically red or black ink on white paper as it is cheaper to use one color than the five or more colors it would take to paint a commercial sign or large-scale advertisement (still true today). I am unable to find an exact pricing guide, they do talk about pricing in the Sign Painters documentary which I don't own so I can't remember exact numbers, but I'm sure if there is an early edition of the Graphic Artists Guild Pricing & Ethical Guidelines book, it's in there.

The lettering styles that these artists often used in showcards were dubbed "knockout" type, as a pro could knock them out in a nearly a few minutes. If you notice the first two photos, all of the letter forms are essentially very similar, with some personalized variation of script styles for the bigger words and some of the smaller type's style is compensated to fit in the space (note the E's in the words "B.C. Consumer" in the second photo). But as you see in the third photo, the Disney animators were able to do a lot more with their signs, incorporating illustrations, multiple colors, multiple styles of type with some sporting drop shadows and others giving their type a personality of it's own (look at the word cartoon on one of the middle most signs).

I'm sure that there were people producing signs for both political parties which would be the "good guy graphic designers" depending on which side you were on. I hope that clears up some of your questions. Feel free to watch the Sign Painters documentary as it is super educational for anyone in the graphic arts field or just interested in type. If you have any additional questions feel free to ask.

Sources:

Speedball Textbook Lettering Poster Design for pen and brush, Ross F. George, 14th edition 1941. Also visible here: http://www.printmag.com/design-inspiration/the-speedball-textbook/

Carriage Painting: A series of practical treatises on the painting of carriages and wagons, Fredrick Marie, 1911

Sign Painters, Directed by Faythe Levine & Sam Macon, 2013

House Industries, House Industries, 2003

Mike Stevens, Mastering Layout: Mike Stevens on the Art of Eye Appeal, 1986