Fighting Words

A graphic designer’s daily concerns are relatively simple: create a visual identity for chosen concept, company, or product; make it convincing and, if possible, elegant; deliver it on a deadline that ranges from weeks to several months. But what if your work was meant to protect men and women in your nation’s armed forces, and delivering it meant the difference—literally—between life and death? What if your client was your enemy? And what if your deadline was a few short hours, not weeks?

The U.S. Army’s 4th Psychological Operations Group, or PSYOP, based in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, has this very task. The only active-duty psychological operations unit in the U. S. armed forces, the 4th PSYOPs’ job is to influence the enemy to surrender by demoralizing its soldiers and/or populace by using radio or television broadcasts, loudspeaker announcements and, often, standardized printed leaflets dropped in huge bundles from planes.

This November in San Francisco, Intersection for the Arts, a non-profit art gallery, exhibited a 50-year retrospective of PSYOP materials. Entitled Paper Bullets, the show demonstrated the widespread employment but limited content of such propaganda. Using words to dishearten the enemy is nearly as old as war itself: in the 13th Century, kites with messages were flown into a Chinese prison to incite a riot, and British soldiers at the Battle of Bunker Hill were given fliers offering them land and freedom if they surrendered. What linked this show—besides their gnarled translations and generally wretched design—was the leaflets’ broad range of appeals to the most basic instincts of their intended targets.

One example, a blood-red flyer dropped on North Korean civilians in 1953, showed a fleet of bombers emptying their payloads. “WARNING!” it read, detailing on its verso what would happen to those who stayed in its path. Another, made by the North Vietnamese and targeted for African-American soldiers, argued: “Black men should not fight for racist USA.” A German leaflet from WWII caricatured Roosevelt using the slogan “Rich man’s war—poor man’s fight,” while Japanese flyers from the same era suggested American G.I.’s look to their unfaithful wives. More recently, an American leaflet dropped on Baghdad read: “We wish only to liberate the people of Iraq of Saddam’s tyranny.”

The point of all PSYOP, of course, is to convince the wavering (enemy) soldier or fearful civilian that the leaflets’ creator has the upper hand and that things will be better if he surrenders or just goes home—unless, of course, his ‘home’ is being targeted for bombing. According to the U.S. Army’s 1979 Psychological Operations Field Manual No. 33-1, leaflets may be persuasive, factual, or directive; they are typically standardized for rapid dissemination and consistency; and their recommended layout is on six-by-three-inch, 16- or 20-pound paper.

The Army prescribes their design precisely. Typography should be “large enough to be perfectly legible and familiar...8 points or larger...Roman”; color must “sharply contrast with the predominant color of the terrain” and must be “appropriate to the culture of the audience so as to signify the idea the propagandist wishes to convey.” Photographs, cartoons, and drawings are “valuable assets,” and “headlines, subheadings, and text should be arranged so as to present an attractive and symmetrical appearance”— army lingua franca for “make it look good.”

The trouble is, they don’t. As design documents, PSYOPs range from amateurish to just plain awful—somewhere between a Chick religious tract and a ball-point drawing made on the back of a Pee-Chee folder. They are riddled with mistranslations: during Desert Storm, Iraqis printed leaflets picturing the Statue of Liberty with tears running down her cheeks and the words “LIBERTY STADIUM IS CRYING.” PSYOPs rely on the cheapest materials and the quickest, most base appeal to war-weary citizens or soldiers, tapping their desires for food, safety, cigarettes, sex, money, or seeing their families again; as well as fears of infidelity, injury, or dying. American PSYOPs are no better: recent Iraqi War leaflets featured clumsy cut-and-paste graphics and pitiable caricatures of Saddam Hussein.

Why are these documents so brutally ugly? Partly, it’s due to the fact that they’re hastily assembled in strategically-threatened mobile print shops erected at the front lines—and sometimes behind them. PSYOP experts are trained in espionage and disguise, gathering knowledge of customs within a culture in order to exploit it later with propaganda. But under fire, they have to design, print, crate, and distribute hundreds of thousands—sometimes millions—of documents, as quickly as battle plans change.

The leaflets’ design is no reflection on their effectiveness. PSYOPs are credited with saving thousands of lives, and the graphic artist may take some comfort in knowing that effective design plays a small but integral part in non-combative war-making. As Paper Bullets demonstrated, leaflets are an effective tactic in every global conflict, their designs and distribution created in the highest-pressure circumstances, their graphic sophistication trumped by their need to win over hearts and minds—and to do so quickly. They are truly fighting words, an essential example of the pen being mightier than the sword.

Fig. 1 Leaflet produced by United States 1st Radio Broadcasting & Leaflet Group, 839th Army Unit, APO 500, 1953. Intended target audience were North Korean Peoples’ Army soldiers.

Front (translation from Korean): I died needlessly for the Communist boss, Kim Il Sung. Will that be your fate too?
Back (translation from Korean): The traitorous communist bosses have tricked you into a war of aggression. They have brought destruction to your country, suffering to your family and death to your comrades. Will they also bring needless death to you? Yes! – Unless you escape to the rear or to the protection of the UN.

Fig. 2 Leaflet produced by United States 1st Radio Broadcasting & Leaflet Group, 839th Army Unit, APO 500, 1953. Intended target audience were North Korean civilians.

Front (translation from Korean): WARNING!
Back (translation from Korean): Stay Away! Save your life! To destroy communism these military targets must be destroyed. Industrial Plant. Military Supply Dump. Military Vehicle. Troop Billet. Save your Life! Stay Away!

Fig. 3 Image of leaflets being distributed from the rear of US Air Force plane over Vietnam, ca. 1966. Courtesy US Air Force

Fig. 4 Front and back cover of leaflet produced by United States military. Intended target audience were United States Army soldiers. Intent was to instruct soldiers in the field on the philosophy and physical instructions on how to distribute and disseminate leaflets in the field.