A flock of birds for a newspaper's first morning

The Daily Herald began in 1911 as a strike sheet for London's printing unions. On 31 March 1919 it was launched again as the Labour Party's daily paper, and this poster announced it. Francis Meynell, who ran the campaign, bought the design from Edward McKnight Kauffer, an American artist living in London, and wrote the caption himself.

The birds were not new. Kauffer had cut them in 1916 as a woodcut called Flight, inspired by a Japanese print, and it was published in the magazine Colour in 1917. Broken into black, white and grey facets, the flock shows the influence of Vorticism.

Kauffer later remembered it as "the first and only Cubist poster design in England", sold to an advertising agent for fifty dollars, and noted that it appeared without his own layout or lettering. The full poster, printed by T. B. Lawrence Ltd, was almost three metres tall.

The V&A says the design became emblematic of Kauffer and influenced many young designers. He went on to make posters for the London Underground and covers for novels by H. G. Wells, Aldous Huxley and Ralph Ellison, and moved to New York in 1940. The image shown here is a later, smaller reprint made for Her Majesty's Stationery Office; complete prints of the 1919 poster are very rare.