Lately I’ve been looking at vintage and contemporary posters, illustrations and advertisements for inspiration, in particular at the bold, complementary color palettes used during that period. I even based my new blog, www.behoff.com’s, color palette and typography from a few vintage posters I came across.
The complimentary colors palettes, hand drawn typography, one-dimensional graphics, and the beautiful illustrations are quite intriguing to draw inspiration from so I’d thought I’d share a few that I’ve collected in recent months.
Below are 40+ vintage (or vintage-inspired) prints, illustrations and advertisements for your color and design inspiration:
I love vintage posters!
The only thing better than the vintage style is the real thing - I spent a semester in Italy when I was in school and had the chance to visit several poster museums. See the collection over here: http://www.nikibrown.com/designoblog/2009/04/13/22-beautiful-vintage-italian-posters/
It is interesting to see the common palette used in the older designs. Very interesting to see how design has evolved from vintage styles.
Mikey Burton did a fabulous job for us on the Cranky Gets Depression piece. It’s hard to tell online (and on the actual uncoated paper as well) we used metallic silver ink. It feels quite neutral with just a touch of retro snaz.
Great collection. Thank’s for sharing. In a similar vein, here’s a great flickr set of WPA posters from the 1930’s that I’m addicted to looking at. Truly remarkable stuff: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pantufla/sets/1477614/
Nice! Just in time for thinking about a poster. Great collection.
It’d be nice if you credited or linked to the authors, or original work where applicable. Nice compilation.
A plethora of inspiration and creativity! Thank you for posting these. I love all that is 1930’s and 40’s — artwork and film especially.
Ouuuuuuu… so inspiring. Thanks for compiling!
Absolutely beautiful. I really do love vintage posters. Thank you for the inspiration!
Great collection! I think my favorite out of that lot is the, The Decemberists poster
Great post. Some familiar posters there and some gems I hadn’t seen before. :0)
Great inspirations!! Thanks for compiling!
Its interesting to see how some styles came back now. Nerds, typography and so on.
These are excellent. I also recently wrote an article about designs made without a computer. I love the look and feel of these posters. Nice collection.
Thank you very much for this post! Amazing collection of beautiful works. Very very inspirational.
The Wolfsonian Museum on Miami Beach has a great collection of WPA and war propaganda posters, among other things.
http://www.wolfsonian.org/collections/c5/index.html
very nice selection.
you can see a good collection of french vintage ads posters on:
http://www.lesartsdecoratifs.fr/francais/publicite/collections-97/l-univers-de-la-publicite/
and for chinese prewar posters: (too bad this site is in Flash) http://oldorientmuseum.com/antique_chinese_posters_dupont_bayer_aspirin.html
This collection is a wonderful inspiration! Maybe i would say most of these posters are retro!
inspiration
Love the retro modern inspired style. I surround myself with the same style prints at home.
I am in love with all of these! Great collection and thank you for sharing! Now, I wish I could get prints of all of them.
Am I missing the part that gives credit to the folks behind these designs? Great list, but without attribution it feels kinda cruddy.
Many of these designs were collected over months and screenshots I’ve saved via LittleSnapper. Varied sources didn’t even have the original artists.
Nice posters.
Very good work. Some of the typography on those posters were amazing. Nice Collection!
Wonderful examples!
One of my favorite graphic designers from the past is Saul Bass. I’ll never forget “The Man With the Golden Arm” movie poster.
I sure like this collection… and yes - a great source of inspiration! thanks!
These are great! I am a huge fan of vintage art and these are very inspiration, I’ll have to share this post on Blogger Den with the rest of the community
Kim: Thanks for admiring my online museum (Old Orient Gallery). The site is in Flash for copyright protection, but you may view them posters individually on this french blog:
http://e-l-i-s-e.blogspot.com/2009_05_22_archive.html
Signed,
Vincent Lexington Harper
Thanks for the cool Designs
So inspiring! Some of them are just amazing!
i like these vintage styles Brian thanks
It’s funny how old designs can come back into fashion and can look new again!
Ahh yes, I remember when the Decemberists were leading the women working back home during the war with their sentimental ballads. Pure vintage.
These are awesome!
This is really cool and very inspiring. I particularly liked some of the fonts and graphic and text layouts.
Simply a very very good post! I don’t have anything to say! Above fellow have done it for me!