Give 'em both barrels.

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Jean Carlu, artist. Office of Emergency Management. 1941. 30 x 40.

Carlu wrote, "The memory retains everything that astonished it." In his posters, viewers find images conceived with the intention to arrest the viewers' eyes. Carlu preferred to be surprising in his work as depicted in this visual analogy between a machine gun and a rivet gun.

The graphics bureau of the Office of Facts and Figures conducted a survey in 1942 to establish a basis for an effective poster design. The survey indicated there was public "confusion" about certain posters' intent. In particular, survey data revealed that people read the worker holding a rivet gun in this Jean Carlu poster as a gangster with a machine gun and thought the poster's subject to be the FBI's war against crime.