Globe Poster Printing Corporation was founded in 1929 in Baltimore, Maryland by business partners Harry Shapiro and Norman Goldstein. The shop specialized in printing showcard posters for movie theaters, vaudeville and burlesque acts, the earliest performers of country and Western music, motorsports events, and carnivals. The company later extended its services to a variety of products such as banners, tickets, and bumper stickers, in the process reaching a clientele based in the birth of rock and roll music during the 1950s. The company spent its 81 years operating in rented warehouse spaces in Baltimore, starting at 113 Hanover Street, moving to 123 Market Place in 1964, 1801 Byrd Street in 1979, and to its final location in 1999 at 3705 Bank Street. The company was owned and operated primarily by two families. Harry Shapiro and Norman Goldstein left Globe in the charge of an employee, Sidney Gibbs, in the 1930s, and Harry’s brother, Norman Shapiro, took over in 1954 and ran the business until 1975. In 1935, Joseph Cicero, Sr. began his tenure at Globe cleaning type and continued working in various jobs until he was foreman. Shapiro sold the company to Cicero in 1975. The company was in debt at time of transfer due to a loan and Shapiro’s secretary, Mildred, stayed on and quietly helped Shapiro siphon off around $50,000 before Cicero found out and let her go. These losses meant there would not be a profitable year until 1988. Joseph, Sr. was the owner until formally retiring and handing operations over to his three sons, Joseph, Jr., Francis, and Robert in 1990. Robert (Bob) began working at Globe in 1965 in the compositing room with the main compositor at the time, Lucous Horne and his backup, Ed Keyser, by putting type away. Off and on for the next 40 years, Bob would pick up new skills at Globe whenever they needed back up, such as running the large poster press, using the Film-o-type machine, shipping, and screenprinting. In 1969, Bob was drafted and served two years in the Navy Reserves during the Vietnam War. He then worked for Black & Decker as an engineer until leaving in 1975 to assist his father in running Globe. Francis (Frank) was a social worker before becoming the voice and face of the company, taking orders by phone and in person, drawing sketches, calculating costs, and printing invoices. Joseph, Jr. (Joey) was an accountant, and continued such work at Globe, tracking the company’s finances. In 1995, Globe experienced significant setbacks involving the loss of a large commercial client’s business (Eastfield Container) to a competitor and a last-minute cancellation and disagreements with promoters over a costly music concert poster order. These events forced Globe to lay off many employees, creating a staff shortage and a long struggle to keep the business open. Globe finally closed in 2010 and sold a large portion of its assets to the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2011. Globe Poster printed their posters using only letterpresses at their start, expanding to include offset lithography and screen printing operations, before migrating to largely computer-aided processes throughout the 1990s and 2000s for the sake of speed. Globe had an in-house artist, Harry Knorr, who worked for Globe for nearly 50 years. Harry was responsible for creating much of Globe’s iconic imagery and for the licensing of Day-Glo ink colors around the 1950s, resulting in their posters being desirable and easily recognized. Knorr developed the overall visual style of Globe with his hand-drawn lettering carved into linoleum or wood, with words and images (visual imagery). The posters were frequently laid out to be read quickly and easily, punctuated with images of the featured people reproduced by using photographs converted to metal plates, known as photo cuts. Globe consistently used Knorr’s original designs throughout its history. When Globe began implementing computer systems, “clip art” and computer fonts also made appearances on their later posters. Globe's design and color choices were noticed on streets and walls by the nascent musicians and managers of rock and roll music by the 1960s, securing these artists and thousands to follow as their regular clientele. Globe received orders from artists made popular by the likes of Motown and Stax records and those performing on the Chitlin Circuit, promoting the careers being built in R&B, soul, blues, and funk music. A great number of Globe's clients were African-American. The color and style of Globe was unofficially adopted by the Go-go scene in Washington D.C., becoming synonymous with the frequent shows. Globe also helped advertise the rise of hip hop and rap music and the growing popularity of reggae. Globe posters were also popular for political campaigns as well as the promotion of gospel plays and musicals, the black comic community, parties and contests at night clubs, performing arts, festivals, small community events, and sporting events. The company would also fill orders for signs and other products for commercial and business enterprises. Globe Poster had a wide variety of patrons in their earliest decades, for which there is only a small representation in this collection. Show cards were printed for horror and spook shows, films, country western shows and concerts, magicians, blackface performances, burlesque and vaudeville shows, and other common forms of entertainment in the early 20th century. There is evidence in this collection of the production of these early jobs thanks to the materials used to print the final poster, such as letterpress cuts and hand-cut rubyliths. Geographically, Globe received and sent orders for clients up and down the East coast, into to the Midwest, and down into the South, including Texas. Other regions of the country contained less common patrons due to high freight costs and the presence of other printing business options.