100 Years of Illustration

Tasteful signage in the USA and Denmark, 1955

Time Out for a surgical update.

Thanks, Jack R., Lainey, and all those viewers who sympathized with me over the carpal tunnel surgery.
Here's a photo just taken by my computer showing how insignificant it looks and how well the surgery has healed.

Now, back to our regular programming.

Tasteful signage in the USA and Denmark, 1955

Click on images to enlarge them.

Actually this old Kodachrome was shot on a trip to Maine we took in the summer of 1954.

As was this, just a grab shot with the old rangefinder Contax using film rated at only 10 ASA if I remember correctly. It's amazing how these have held up in comparison to Ektachrome shot years later that faded and the images lost forever.

A painted sign and a gilded eagle carving that were hanging on the wall outside Frank Sylvia's antique shop in Nantucket, June of 1954.

My beautiful young wife mugging for the camera outside the same antique shop. These figureheads were the real thing in those days, before they began being cast in styrofoam.

Nothing could be simpler or more beautiful than this brass sign taken outside a barber shop in Aalborg, Denmark in 1955. It's a basin that was tucked under the chin of a customer being shaved.

A metal sign identifying a post office, also from Aalborg, Denmark, 1955.

More to come, stay tuned.

More great posters from 1955

Click on images to enlarge them.

There were also many kiosks in Switzerland. This one features a poster advertising cigarettes. The poster below it was purely political with very uninteresting type composition

This one promoted Coca Cola with a fanciful cartoon illustration.

This poster for peace dominates all surrounding images by the use of unique letterforms in a clever design concept.

Enlarged version of the above.

A good example of how stacking excellent design images overwhelms all else in view.

Enlarged version of the above.

Photography wasn't as commonly used in those days as it is now. It's obvious that there was not much design and art direction involved as well. But it was a start and the result is clean and very legible except for the Vote Socialist! which should have been at least legible.

More to come, stay tuned.

A Mind-Blowing Experience -- Design 1955

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London, 1955. Outdoor Advertising at its most blatant. No design to speak of, just a shouting match.

This is street in Paris in the summer of 1955, just ten years after the end of World War II in Europe. Bomb damage to buildings may be seen just behind the poster hoardings used to hide the scars of war. I was 26 years old and had recently completed seven years of reserve military service as an artillery sergeant. These French posters were not particularly impressive and looked similar to work seen at home in the USA and in the UK.

Noticeable amongst all the banal posters was this very competent illustration, "For old age."

These images are scanned from Kodachromes taken with an old rangefinder Contax that I had bought used. I told everyone that it had once belonged to Hitler's nephew. This is from an old damaged Polaroid photo made in 1959 on the deck of the Swedish liner Gripsholm with one of their stewards between my wife and me.

Driving through Italy we came across our first stark and compelling posters for gasoline.

Natural gas products

And motor oil.

The most mind-blowing experience came upon entering Switzerland where poster hoardings seemed to be a true art form. This was a poster for an exhibition in St. Gallen featuring a wonderful illustration.

Lots, lots more to come. I'm scheduled for another carpal tunnel surgery (right hand this time) in a few days so I'll be uploading irregularly. With some luck and speedy healing I should be able to add more material than I have in recent days.

Thanks in advance for your patience.

The Golden Age of Design: an Introduction

It's about time we started some show-and-tell about design.

At the same time in mid-century that Al Parker and his talented colleagues were doing great illustrations for the popular press in the USA, some fabulous design work was taking place in Europe, particularly Switzerland.

To set the stage, so to speak, here's a great example of typography from the early 20th or late 19th century. It's a glass shop door in Lisbon, Portugal, and that's me shooting Kodachrome with a Nikon F.

I followed that in my slide show with this poster circa 1957 to show Cornell students what I thought were the limits of just how far restraint and abstraction could go and still have a good promotional piece.

This is a poster for a Swiss wine, which is not bad when drunk on site. The French, of course, scorn it and say it's only good for washing mirrors.

By the mid-1970s, beautiful faces predominated poster hoardings as much as they did magazine covers. Click on image to enlarge.

Nowhere was classy design more evident than in the collateral material produced by Swissair. This is a paper ticket wallet printed on silver and white duplex stock and embossed with the airline's logo.

These are beautiful little boxes of toasted almonds and hazelnuts as munchies served with a dramatic solid red paper napkin before meals. This was in economy, not business or first-class. Click on image to enlarge.

Today this is what an economy passenger get on a Southwest Airlines transcontinental flight. Click on image to enlarge.

You can read more at this hotlink.