These posters by students at School of Visual Arts were made in response to President Gerald Ford’s initial outlook on New York City’s financial crisis in 1975. Ford was against offering the city any bailouts. A Oct. 29, 1975 speech to the National Press Club was summarized by New York Daily News with the headline, “FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD.” (Ford actually never said those words in his address.) These posters seem to parody the design of the NYDN headline with Railroad Gothic used in place of the newspaper’s custom typeface Daily News Gothic.
Photographs of the original posters, as shown by the Glaser Archives on their Instagram account, September 2018.