Vintage Souvenir Penants (Part 2)

Here’s the second part of my vintage souvenir penants post. The first one one last week featured vintage penants for U.S. destinations, and this week it’s all the Canadian destinations. These great old penants were discovered in my in-laws basement when doing a huge clear up. One of my fantasies is discovering nice old forgotten gems in lofts and basements, so this really was an exciting find.

Vintage Souvenir Penants (Part 1)

Recently discovered these wonderful vintage souvenir penants while clearing up my in-law’s basement. This series is of a bunch of US destinations (plus the RMS Queen Mary) all circa 1930s – 1960s Next week.  I’ll show all the Canadian destinations. If you like these, you’ll enjoy my Vintage Luggage Tag post from a while back. Thanks to Ron for bestowing this great collection on me.

Vintage penants from Disneyland, New York City, Columbia University, Cornell University, St. Petersberg Florida, Cleveland, Buffalo.

Bull Ring type

Just had a trip to the sunny, south of Spain and visited one of the few remaining bull fight rings in Mijas. No bull fights that day (thank goodness), but I did have a nice self-tour of this miniature bull ring, with my new camera and f0.95 lens. Love those ceramic seat numbers, and have always loved vintage bull fight posters.

Vintage tire posters – Soho London

Been far too long since my last post.  I’ve been meaning to show off these great old tire/oil posters that I discovered in a Soho parking garage a month of so back.  I was shooting a music video in the space next door, and there they were!

The posters must be circa 1950s, and are actually painted right on the wall of the garage entrance – perhaps inside, one could spend some time in the “lubrication bay”! Nice to see the old BP logo again. Energol is still one of their products today.

Luckily, unlike so many others, these have survived all these years without a decision to paint over them. Reminds me of the amazing discovery of some 1930s posters in the Notting Hill Tube Station.

Welcome to Dalston: Bang!

Well, it isn’t that bad – really!  This poster mysteriously appeared near our house recently, and I just had to shoot it (no pun intended). It’s a rather cool looking thing – complete with all the requisite metres/scales that are required, presumably, to evaluate one’s prowess with the ol’ pistol. The holes (real bullet holes???) look quite real, but we can only assume we’ve got an artist in our midst. Dalston is the edgy, up and coming, new arty area of London,of course. So we hear. Bang.

Archive, archive and more archive! Ben Reed’s Sweetheart video

Just found this mega-graphic-designy music video by Ben Reed for The Wave Picture’s track Sweetheart. It’s a pure celebration of the visual & typographic ephemera of the archival printed page. Archive, archive and more archive. Type specimens, kids books, educational periodicals, random crazy stuff….

While I’ve explored this aesthetic a lot over the years, most closely through my Dinnick & Howells’ “Juxtapose Cards” (see bottom) this video takes it to another level. The sheer amount of research to uncover all these images is an impressive feat.  Each moment in the song’s lyrics is supported by multiple visual & typographic “samples” and this happens again and again, without any reuse of previous images. If I were to count (virtually impossible as it all rushes past to quickly) I would estimate we’re approaching 1000 images here! I hope you had some interns helping out on this one Ben! You can watch the full video here:

And here are some of my Dinnick & Howells “Juxtapose Cards” from 2004 (pretty close eh!).
Card meanings (from top): “Miss You”, Ho Ho Ho (Christmas card), Sweet Heart (Valentines Day card), Tanks/Thanks a Lot (thank you card).

Lost (and found) posters in the London Underground

What could be cooler than finding 50-year-old posters, that were forgotten in a sealed off corridor in Notting Hill Gate tube station in London? Uh, well probably a lot of things, but this is pretty damned cool, don’t you think! Here’s the statement from Transport for London’s Mike Ashworth who photographed them:

Work at (Notting Hill Gate) station has recently uncovered these amazing advertising posters in non-public areas and that date from c1956 – 1959 when the station’s lifts were removed and replaced by escalators. These are in an old lift passageway. We will be leaving these intact – and please do not pester the station staff as the posters are wholly inaccessible – which is why they’ve probably survived 50 odd years!

You can see the full set of posters on Mike’s Flickr page.

The Vegas Neon Sign Museum Bone Yard

I recently found out about the amazing old sign Bone Yard at the Neon Museum in Las Vegas. What can I say other than LOOK at all those wicked cool old signs!! I love bulb-signs!!! Gotta get myself over there soon and see for myself. Thanks to Lois Lane74 (via Flickr) for the photographs.

An old sign that we rescued and installed into our home in Toronto. It hung on College Street for decades after this shop actually went out of business. I just happened to be walking by when they were taking it down, and had the nerve to ask for it. Love those bulb signs!

Google Map Alphabet from Rhett Dashwood

One of those I-wish-I’d-thought-of-this-ideas! Lot of work!  Over about 7 months (when he had free time between design projects) designer Rhett Dashwood searched miles and miles of aerial imagery from Google Maps (primarily over his home region of Victoria, Australia, in order to piece together a complete, aerial alphabet. Buildings, rock formations, hedge rows, roadways, anything…  nice one!

Airport runway graphics

I’ve always loved the entirely utilitarian, but accidentally beautiful, random graphic compositions that exist on airport runways and the asphalt roadways leading here and there. Lines and letters, numbers and lights, grays and whites, reds and yellows, shadows and skid marks. Isolated (and particularly in black and white) they become quite interesting, abstract typographic/graphic compositions. One day, I’d love to have free access to wander around an airport (not likely!) and take some carefully composed photos, or better yet, from a helicopter where the vantage point would allow even more interesting views of all the lines, numbers and lights.

I finally had my camera with me during a series of recent flights, and here are a few of my airport runway photographs.