Poster House in New York, a museum dedicated exclusively to poster design, has unveiled its latest exhibition: Lester Beall & A New American Identity. Revolving around the Rural Electrification Administration (REA) that was set up by President Roosevelt in 1935 to help bring electricity to rural areas in the US, the exhibition studies this initiative through the work of American graphic designer Lester Beall, who produced several series of posters in partnership with the REA – the full collection of which are on display for the first time.

“The REA didn’t just need design and advertising to achieve [their] aims; they needed an entire PR campaign, of which Beall’s posters were a significant part,” curator Angelina Lippert tells us.

Convincing both rural communities that electricity was key to “bettering their lives, making them more money, and giving them more free time”, as well as encouraging the urban population to support the movement, was no mean feat. Engaging live demonstrations (carried out in travelling ‘Electric Circuses’) as well as clever marketing was needed to push the idea forward and get Roosevelt’s costly policies through Congress.

“Regarding the success of the campaign, the fact that the US went from having only 10% of its rural population electrified to 50% at the time the final poster was printed – and up to 90% by the end of that decade – speaks volumes of how successful the entire effort was,” says Lippert.

Beall’s work played an integral role in this and over the course of five years he created three separate series of posters promoting the use of electricity. These posters were made almost exclusively using silkscreen, and many of them incorporate simple elements of photomontage. In fact, simplicity was crucial to their success.

Known for being averse to the kind of “overly-intellectual” Modernist style of poster design that had taken off in Europe, many people were instead responsive to more explicit forms of communication. “Culturally, Americans tend to be a much more literal and blunt people, and, while there are obvious exceptions to this, the most popular form of American advertising design prior to World War II was an equally literal approach, spearheaded primarily by the Society of Illustrators,” explains Lippert.

“We don’t get great Modernism in graphic design en masse until after the war. That’s not to say that there aren’t strains of Modernism prior to World War II, but that it failed to find a mass audience.

“Beall is actually one of the few homegrown Modernists within the country, as most of the other great modern graphic designers that were working in the United States in the early 20th century all came from Europe – Joseph Binder, George Salter, Erik Nistche, Alexey Brodovitch. And while their work in the US is excellent, it wasn’t what middle America was using to decorate their homes.”

Featuring primary colours, pared-back compositions, and even big arrows that direct the viewer’s eyes to important information, Beall’s posters succeed in being straight to the point. But this elementary style doesn’t detract from the work’s aesthetic value – in fact, Beall’s designs proved to be a seminal reference point for his successors in the field.

It’s worth noting that this was due in part to his later commercial work, with Lippert saying, “He may not be Saul Bass in today’s popular imagination, but the corporate work he did after the war made him a massive figure in graphic design. He was so successful that he was able to move his studio out of Manhattan onto a working farm in Connecticut and still maintain all his clients.” Which, as she points out, was quite a feat “in an era without email”.

Lester Beall & A New American Identity is on show at Poster House, New York until February 23; posterhouse.org