New Deal Accomplishment: 2,000,000 WPA posters to inform, remind, and promote

Above: WPA posters promoted good nutrition, such as this one for milk. Image from the Library of Congress.

Above: Another WPA poster promoting milk, this time in a winter setting. Image from the Library of Congress.

Above: Many WPA posters promoted education and announced education opportunities. Image from the Library of Congress.

Above: WPA posters frequently tried to encourage Americans to be proactive with their healthcare. Image from the Library of Congress.

Above: The most common type of WPA poster may have been posters advertising the WPA's Federal Theatre plays. Image from the Library of Congress.

Above: A WPA poster announcing a WPA circus event on Coney Island, New York. Image from the poster collection of George Mason University, used here for educational and non-commercial purposes.

Above: WPA artists making WPA posters in Denver, Colorado, 1938. Photo from the National Archives.

Above: A close-up of the previous image, where we can see, "Why stop learning?... Attend free classes... WPA Adult Education and Recreation Program."

Above: A poster promoting a poster show at the Hull House settlement house in Chicago. Image from the Library of Congress.

Above: Some WPA posters even addressed social issues. Image from the Library of Congress.

Above: WPA posters reminded workers to be careful. In this exhibit of work carried out by the WPA in Maryland, we see posters "Are You Doing All You Can To Stop Accidents?" "Be Wise Take Care," and "Save Lives Through Safe Habits." Photo from the University of Maryland College Park Archives.

Above: During World War II, the WPA made posters urging Americans to buy war bonds, follow proper procedures during air raid warnings, volunteer, salvage metal, rubber, and other items, and more. Image from the Library of Congress.

Above: In 2017, the United States Postal Service issued stamps showing WPA posters. Image from a personal collection.

WPA Posters

According to the Library of Congress there are about 2,000 WPA poster designs still in existence, and according to Ranger Doug's Enterprises there were originally 35,000 designs and 2 million posters printed from these designs. The Wikipedia page for the WPA's Federal Art Project highlights these numbers too, and references Posters of the WPA (Christopher DeNoon, University of Washington Press, 1987) and Posters for the People: The Art of the WPA (Ennis Carter, Quirk Books, 2008).

The 2 million posters were not only important in terms of public information, they were also important to the artists making them. When asked decades later, "Well, how do you look upon the WPA days from this vantage point?" WPA poster artist Anthony Velonis (who created the "Better Housing" poster above) answered, "Well, it saved my life, put it that way, literally. I mean, literally, you know, it gave it some meaning, and it was the best university I've ever gone to. I couldn't have asked for anything better. The contact and the dialogue with all those artists and the work that took place was just invaluable. You couldn't have gotten it in any other way. I was conscious at the time how precious it was and I said 'I must get the most out of it'" ("Oral history interview with Anthony Velonis, 1965 October 13," Smithsonian Archives of American Art, accessed June 7, 2026).