Via Starwars.com:

Few images register instant success like the timeless Yoda “READ” poster design, created by the American Library Association (ALA) in 1983 for National Library Week. Printed nearly three decades before the first official Star Wars Reads Day, the poster still feels as relevant today as it did in the pre-Google days of card catalogs and Dewey Decimals. Composed of a simple production shot of Yoda with a book stripped in under his arm (this was pre-Photoshop, mind you), the image — paired with the elegantly-presented “READ and The Force is with you” snipe — feels so fitting, so natural, so right — that anyone within eye-shot of it is often struck with the sudden urge to crack open a book.

But the iconic poster as we know it wasn’t always going to be the masterpiece it’s become. Digging through the old Lucasfilm archive files, we uncovered some early concept images proposed for the campaign as well as some correspondence regarding the poster’s design. As you can see, these black and white mock-ups utilize a different image of Yoda, keying in on the “Force” aspect of the message rather than the “READ”:

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