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Globe Press posters at OCAD U Library Learning Zone

Globe Press posters at OCAD U Library Learning Zone

Globe posters were truly the people's posters. For more than 80 years, they brightened city street corners and telephone poles, country crossroads and union halls, shouting the names of bands and the dates of carnivals up and down the East Coast. A Globe Poster made you look, with its bright inks and bold type that shook and shimmied.

Founded in 1929, Globe grew by leaps, bounds and bold swatches of Day-Glo color into one of the nation's largest showcard printing companies. Starting with vaudeville, movies, burlesque and carnival, Globe found its groove in the 1960s with posters for top R&B and rock acts like James Brown, Otis Redding, and Ike and Tina Turner. In 1975, Joseph Cicero Sr., a long-time employee of the company, purchased Globe Poser from owner Norman Shapiro. Cicero's sons, Bob, Frank, and Joe Jr., followed their father into the business, carrying Globe's iconic style forward into the rap, hip-hop and Go-Go scenes.

With demand for posters dwindling in this digital age, the Cicero brothers decided to close up shop in 2010. But Baltimoreans and students aware of Globe's legacy formed a Friends of Globe group to find a new home for its treasures. Because of that vision, the desire of the Cicero's to keep Globe in Baltimore, and MICA's creative thinking, Globe did not die. Truckloads of wood type, letterpress cuts and other tools of the trade moved from Highlandtown to MICA in the summer of 2011, and when the fall semester started, Bob Cicero began teaching a new generation of artists how to make a poster "pop."

No known as the Globe Collection and Press at MICA, Globe's history, tools, and style continue to inspire through education, archiving efforts and in the design of new commercial work for clients ranging from Hello Kitty to Smithsonian Institutions.

Come visit a display of posters from the Globe Collection now hanging in the Library Learning Zone at 113 McCaul.