Skilfully designed and carefully aimed at public observers, a poster can be a powerful weapon … particularly in wartime.

A thought-provoking wartime poster exhibition, Patriotism Persuasion Propaganda – American War Posters, opens at the National Archives of Australia on Thursday 3 August and will be launched by aviator and adventurer Dick Smith at 6.15pm. A media preview will be held earlier in the day from 11am to 11.45am.

Patriotism Persuasion Propaganda primarily focuses on America’s strategic use of poster art in times of conflict, but is supplemented by a collection of Australian wartime posters.

Director-General of the National Archives of Australia, Ross Gibbs, says the Australian Government produced many propaganda posters during World War II to gain public support for a variety of wartime programs.

‘A set of 10 propaganda posters our curators were looking at had been commissioned by the Beaufort Division of the Department of Aircraft Production to motivate their factory workers,’ Mr Gibbs said. In all, the exhibition comprises more than 50 posters.

‘The head of the Beaufort division [John Storey] commissioned a commercial artist [James Northfield] to produce a series of posters for the factory floor, and judging by the posters in the Archives collection he did a beautiful job of creating images that tugged at the heartstrings while delivering a corporate and patriotic message,’ Mr Gibbs said.

‘There is no absenteeism in the firing line’, reads one of the posters, ‘let there be none in our production line’.

Patriotism Persuasion Propaganda is a travelling exhibition from the Australian National Maritime Museum, supplemented by material from the National Archives collection. It will remain on show at the National Archives until 22 October.