We Can Do It!
Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company (War Production Co-ordinating Committee)1943
We Can Do It! is a 1943 factory morale poster (colour lithograph) for Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company.
See the original
The line
We can do it!
Why it works
One of the most famous images of the Second World War began as a staff notice. In 1942 Westinghouse's War Production Co-ordinating Committee hired the Pittsburgh artist J. Howard Miller to make a series of posters for its factories, and "We Can Do It!", a worker in a red polka-dot bandana flexing her arm, was scheduled to hang for two weeks in February 1943. It was a work-incentive message for women already on the payroll, not a recruitment appeal, and she had no name. The poster resurfaced decades later through the National Archives, and in 1982 a feminist press catalogue labelled a postcard of it "Rosie", fusing it with the "Rosie the Riveter" of a wartime song and of Norman Rockwell's separate, copyrighted 1943 magazine cover. Because Miller's design was in the public domain, it could be copied freely onto mugs and T-shirts. It is studied as a case of an ad's meaning being rewritten by later audiences, turning a corporate productivity poster into a global feminist icon.
Techniques
- Visual metaphor A worker rolling up her sleeve and flexing her arm turns 'we can do it' into a single image of strength.
- Pathos Upbeat pride and determination were meant to lift factory morale, and later audiences reread the same emotion as female empowerment.
Sources · 4
Updated
