Unlike some of today's self-serving artists who have become stars by opportunistically building a career on street poster art, the artists of the Atelier Populaire eschewed the cult of the personality in favor of egalitarian politics. To them, a poster that conveyed an unmistakable message leading to action was of primary importance... who actually made the poster was irrelevant. The Atelier's mission was made clear in a statement issued in '68:

"The posters produced by the Atelier Populaire are weapons in the service of the struggle and are an inseparable part of it. Their rightful place is in the centers of conflict, that is to say, in the streets and on the walls of the factories. To use them for decorative purposes, to display them in bourgeois places of culture or to consider them as objects of aesthetic interest is to impair both their function and their effect. This is why the Atelier Populaire has always refused to put them on sale.

The message on this poster reads: The Vote Changes Nothing, The Struggle Continues. During the Paris uprising many activists concluded that reformist electoral politics were a dead-end. Demonstrations and strikes became the preferred forms of political action.

This poster reads: We Are The Power. During the uprising organized labor took to the streets in unprecedented numbers.

This poster titled, Borders = Repression, portrays a French policeman painted with the stripes of a border crossing barricade. The message being that workers are kept apart and in competition with one another based on the false division of nationalism.

The title of this poster is Free Information, and its double entendre is breathtaking. Is the poster a poke at a self-censored press that tows the government line and offers people false "Free Information"? Or does the graphic portray a free press held hostage and in need of liberation? Note that even the cord on the microphone is tied in a knot, implying the choking off of reliable news reporting.

In order to contain the widening popular revolt, pro-government goon squads were formed composed of right-wing workers and off duty policemen. They continually assaulted demonstrators and organizers, infiltrated and broke up political meetings and rallies, and attempted by wholesale thuggery to intimidate sympathizers of the uprising. This poster mocked one aggressive right-wing group, the
Civic Action, for being Fascist Vermin.

This poster, Down With The Infernal Cadence, condemns the long hours, "speedups", low pay, and general exploitation of industrial workers on the shop floor. The abstraction of a worker who must do six jobs at once, combined with a politically astute yet poetic title, exemplifies what made the posters of Paris 68 so powerful.