Also at the Stoke Potteries Museum and Art Gallerywas this wonderful cinema poster for the Beatles’ Hard Day’s Night movie. All the lettering is screen printed and hand cut.

In those days signs like this would normally be painted by hand in poster paint on showcard, but The Gaumont, Hanley probably wanted a few copies and so screen printing would have been the obvious solution. Printing would have meant boring old letterpress – not a very cool option for the subject matter.

The stencil would have been shellac coated paper stuck to a backing paper. The letters were cut out with a blade – the backing paper would allow the centres of letters to stay in place while the paper was ironed onto the stretched silk screen. The shellac melted just enough to stick.

The medium allows for very sharp lettering and a modern style – the lettering for “A Hard Day’s Night” is very funky! A gorgeous piece of work and a classic of it’s time.