Only 11 hours to London...

S2. Artist: Jorma Suhonen, 1937.

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About Ariadne

Only eleven hours to London from Helsinki... And look! The rivals Aero (later Finnair) and Aerotransport (later SAS) are even co-operating! Yes, everything was surely different in the past.

About the artist

The advertising expert and poster artist Jorma Suhonen is one of the most acclaimed commercial graphic designers of the 1930s. In 1934, he founded the advertising agency SEK together with Holger Erkelenz and Aarno Knuus. The three young men had completed their studies at the Central School of Arts and Crafts the same year.

It was clear from the beginning that Jorma Suhonen was to be the newly founded agency’s leading poster artist. In 1933, he had won first prize in the poster competition Scandinavian Air with a poster made for the company Oy Aero Ab. This success continued between 1937 and 1948, when Aero ordered several posters from SEK and Suhonen.
Commissioned by the Tourist Society in Finland, Suomen Matkailijayhdistys, Suhonen also made a series of posters about the island of Suursaari (Hogland). Unfortunately, it is not known where these posters are today.

In the post-war period, Suhonen also made a significant contribution to the National Relief Fund (Kansanapu) by his posters that urged people to be economical and show solidarity. Freely translated, they read ‘Help with what you can’ and ‘Open up your heart. The National Relief Fund awaits your gift’. From 1942 to 1950, Jorma Suhonen also taught graphic art at the Central School of Arts and Crafts.

After having left SEK at the end of the 1940s, Jorma Suhonen began a new career at the Finnish Foreign Trade Association (today Finpro). He also worked as a graphic designer and was responsible for planning exhibitions of Finnish work abroad. In 1977, he was granted the state’s art pension.

Hungry for more?

The above text and the poster can be found in the book Come to Finland. It's a quality coffee table book filled with vintage travel posters from Finland – and many travel tales and historical anecdotes. The book is the result of a long and successful cultural history project. You can order the book here.

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