100 Years of Sex

To commemorate 100 years of public health STD programs, the City Clinic of San Francisco has posted 100 posters on STD prevention. The images lack attribution and date, but the spectrum visual strategies and messages is fantastic.

I thought this one was particularly effective, both earnest and ironic, packing humor and fear in an urgent and familiar retro package:

To really catch all the zingers, click through for an, um, larger version.

Update 7/11/11. Mike wrote in to ID the poster above: it was designed by Art Chantry in 1993. There’s a bit more info on it here.

It’s also one of the 150 images in this exhibition of 25 years of international AIDS awareness posters. Some highlights are up at Design Observer.