In keeping with the international interest in the Keep Calm and Carry On poster and assorted accessories mania, I, too, have succumbed.

To remind you, here’s an extremely cute short, short film about the history of Keep Calm. And I have to say that if more book shops looked like Barter Books, we’d all be a lot calmer and have many more paper books on our shelves instead of Kindles, Nooks, Kobos, and lawnmowers.

In honour of Keep Calm’s, yes, honourable history, which you can also catch up on in the wiki entry, I decided to make my own poster. Then it got out of hand, as you’ll see, and now I have posters galore, and counting.

You can do this, too, grasshopper, and it’ll give you a lot more satisfaction than buying posters, cups, or any of the other tchochke available in abundance for vast sums of money. Plus, you’ll learn a new skill in whatever image editing software you choose to use.

Plus and in addition, furthermore, my poster(s) – they’re so cheap, they’re FREE. You can save them as image files for yourself, should you wish, or use them as patterns to make your own.

The original wartime poster looks like this:

I’m no monarchist, so out went the crown and in came the repository of all that is good in the world – the kettle.

So far, so calm. And I even kept the faith with the typeface by using this wonderful and free font, Keep Calm (for personal use) from K-Type.  Sometimes, the simplest advice is the only advice worth taking. But if you feel somewhat playful, why not add a little preferential enhancement via your own biases, colour and otherwise:

On the day I did this little project – which, let’s face it, was all about learning a few Photoshop skills and being rather silly – I had a short, intense affair with Latin and Google Translate, and the marriage resulted in this little darling, which I call Associate Professor Smartybritches:

See how a slab of time well wasted can lead to even more time well wasted? Look out for more in the Gallery of Pixels and Graphs, which is being created pixel by graph and graph by pixel as we drink our tea.  Stay well, and remember to Keep Calm and – you know the drill.