If every picture is worth 1,000 words, Saskatchewan Andrew King was one of the most prolific authors in the world. For close to half a century King published successful newspapers - first the Rouleau Enterprise and later the Estevan Mercury. At the same time, he built a poster-printing business that left an enduring legacy detailing the golden years of the travelling entertainment industry in Canada and the western United States. King recognized an opportunity when he learned that the itinerant circuses, carnivals, acting troupes, and thrill shows that formed part of the staple diet in small and not-so-small communities had to obtain their advertising materials - posters - from suppliers in the United States. Opportunity intersected with King's mastery of the wood-block engraving progress, and in 1911 he opened Enterprise Show Print in Rouleau. The name was changed to King Show Print in 1944 when King moved to Estevan, and finally bowed to changing times in 1958 when it closed. The University of Saskatchewan, in a show of King's work, described his approach:
"During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries traveling circuses were among the biggest and most innovative of entertainment promoters. Faced with the formidable task of marketing its show in hundreds of towns each year, circuses pioneered the strategy of saturating small communities with print advertising. They filled every possible corner using window cards, posters on telephone poles, and multi-sheet giant billboards plastered on farm barns that could as King said 'be seen a mile away'.
"King believed that a picture was worth a thousand words and his designs included a minimum of text. Their characteristic features were one or two brightly coloured and dramatically drawn figures appropriate to the event, a charging animal, a clown, or circus midway. The objective was to immediately capture the attention and to entice viewers to an event completely outside their daily experience."
