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.

Bradbury’s Gallery: Posters for Dalston

Back wall featuring a rare Buster Keaton poster from the 1970s

Woody Allen, Play it Again Sam poster from 1972

We’ve lived in Dalston, North London for about 3 years now, and though I wasn’t so sure about it early on, but I’m definitely coming around. The hip and cosy Tina We Salute You cafe has made me love our little corner of Dalston, and now Bradbury’s Gallery/Poster Shop is extending my range of affection even farther.

When I first walked past Bradbury’s a few weeks back, I did a double take and literally gasped!  A vintage poster shop, 3 minutes from my house!  I walked in and introduced myself, then told Peter, the owner, that he had single-handedly made Bradbury Street 1000% hipper (and Dalston too).

With an ever-changing selection of vintage, but not at all typical, film posters from all over the world, always curious Polish film posters, gallery art prints as well as local artist prints, Bradbury’s is a more than welcome addition to the expanding reputation of Dalston as the new arts epicentre of London, which is something I am really chuffed about.

So head over to Bradbury’s and enjoy the fab posters, perhaps you’ll even find something for that oh-so-hard-to buy-for person on your Christmas list. I guarantee you’ll love it.

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.

Gift idea: Miniature Vintage Video Game Cabinets

Well, this post was intended to be about my love of vintage video game cabinets, and the seductive typography of those game logos: Galaxian, Defender, Donkey Kong. These were the logos of my childhood and without realizing it at the time, I was really affected by them… even today, they get my heart racing.

But since it’s that time of year, and fun gift ideas are always in demand, here’s something pretty cool for you. Miniature vintage video game cabinets! Lovingly and painstakingly made with great accuracy by Justin Whitlock, who’s stated philosophy is “There is no charge for awesomeness”. Damn right! You can see them all on his flickr page here.

The cabinets are about 5 inches tall, and he’s got a fantastic range of games covered. All the pricing and shipping info is explained on his Flickr page as well. They are very affordable – between $20.00 and $30.00 per cabinet. I want one, and I want it now! Galaga is mine.

iVictrola

This is one of those “damn, I wish I’d thought of that” ideas. In fact, I kinda did think of this once (really!), but not in such a super cool, old world meets new world kind of way. I found this amazing thing on the Design Within Reach website, and it got my heart racing. The lovely Magnavox logo that sits on the vintage metal horn is my excuse for this (industrial design) post on my type blog, but it’s really the object and the idea itself that I love. It uses no electricity, simply amplification through the base, up and out through the horn. Love it.

Here’s a caption from DWR website: Designer Matt Richmond’s iVictrola merges turn-of-the-century technology with new-millennium gadgetry. The steampunk aesthetic of this new fangled contraption belies the simplicity of the design – place your iPhone in the indented “dock” in the walnut base and turn on some tunes. The sound is carried from a hole in the base, amplified by the metal Magnavox horn to fill the room.

Kanye West – Paranoid

A nice homage to vintage, thriller title sequences (or actually vintage, thriller trailers) is to be found in the video for Kanye West’s new track Paranoid featuring Rihanna. The video directed by Nabil Elderkin owes a lot to a LOT of references, but I guess that’s what homages are all about.

Lets count them, shall we! Start with Nosferatu, add a little Fallen Angel (thanks Art of the Title Sequence ), toss in some Sin City, and all those great ’30s-’50s sci-fi and horror thrillers. The story line is a little weak, but the typography, production design and referential, l0-fi styling is lovely. There’s been a trend in hip-hop videos in the past few year that likes to “visualize” the lyrics with on-screen typography. That stuff is usually pretty arbitrary, decorative and dull, so it’s refreshing to see it here, with an unexpected historical slant (as well as some relationship the theme of the tune… uh, I think).  Not sure if Kanye “art directed” – apparently he often does.

Old is New: New is Old

It may be quite clear from a cursory review of my posts, that I am rather drawn to historical design and typography. While I am undeniably a creature of modern times, I just love old stuff. Old cars, old books, old art movements, and old type.

Well, I am certainly not alone, and while a curiosity has always been there among us designers, there is an interesting phenomenon at work at the moment – analog is becoming digital like never before – old is becoming new; vintage is vogue; forgotten is being remembered, and all in an unabashed celebration of “wear and tear” – the more visible clues of  ‘non-modern-ness’ the better! Case in point is the wonderful collection of vintage block type from Oliver Weiss’ Walden Type Co. Not only have they curated a really fresh array of “real vintage” letter forms (fresh even relative to the wonderful collections that Dover has produced in their books for years and years – more recently with digital scans included), but their collections are very affordably priced.  The Wild West Press collection (which the above specimens come from ) consists of 47 fonts and hundreds of little clip art pics, all for $49.95 USD.

Weiss explains the origins of Wild West Press collection here (from the introduction in the accompanying manual): To create this set of fonts, we have sifted through original material from the Library of Congress and a great number of other historical sources. Where ever possible,we identified the fonts used in each specimen and thus arrived at a short list of typefaces that printers appear to have favored most. We are pleased to make these fonts available for the first time in the context of printing in the Old West. As they are taken from original specimens they carry the chinks and dings of hard use, which should only add to their charm.

Well, I love them (of course), and though I only bought the collection about a week ago, I’ve already used them for the titles of a documentary I’m developing called Alfred & Jakobine (news to come!). Anyway, great work Walden Type Co. Keep it up, and thanks for your efforts and for remembering the forgotten. A small sampling from the 47 beautiful, scratched, uneven, worn fonts can be seen below.

Fiodor Sumkin – Vintage (redrawn)

I’ve always loved vintage typography (as this blog makes pretty clear), and have collected old, rare type specimen books (as well as the wonderful Dover Archive books) for years. I recently discovered the work of Amsterdam/Paris based Fiodor Sumkin who clearly shares this interest, but what makes his work far more interesting than simply using vintage letterforms in his work (as many of us like to try from time to time) is that he “samples and re-renders” these vintage letterforms, into new, eccentric, hand drawn compositions. They represent a kind of anti-technological statement in the face of digital perfection – a movement that has been swelling up for a few years now (see post on Rude from last year) – but also a kind of “remixed history”, taking the ‘old’ (and the personality and historical associations embedded in old type specimens) and making the ‘brand new’, with a decidedly cheeky, contemporary if not occasionally cynical edge. Combine that with child-like, 45° angle magic marker fill lines, and the occasional illustrative elements that wander in, and you’ve got something very interesting indeed.

Vintage Bollywood Posters

Last week I had a great visit back to Toronto, where I’m originally from. Had lots of time with family and friends, and through a few encounters and events, I was reminded that Toronto is a very creative city, with a lot of creative people, with a lot of amazing creative energy.

My sister Tania always reminds me of this with her wonderful, eclectic illustration work, but one other encounter did too. My new friend Dave Trattles, a very talented social documentary photographer who has spent a lot of time in India, had me over to his studio, and took me through his massive, wonderful collection of vintage Bollywood posters.

As you may know, India produces more films per year than Hollywood, and has done for some time. Hardly a new industry, India has been producing films on a grand scale since the 1930s. Dave’s collection features posters mainly from the 1960′s and 1970′s and many clearly show the influences of American genres including crime, horror, westerns, blaxploitation, as well their more home-grown elaborate musicals and melodramas. There are even “modified” versions of European posters, where nudity has been carefully “corrected” with painted on clothing!

Stylistically, the far-reaching influences I detected ranged from Russian Constructivism, early 20th century German film posters (Fritz Lang’s M), Paul Rand’s hand made compositions, American surf movie posters, blaxplotation movie posters, DC comics, on and on.

I just had to photograph (badly) some of Dave’s posters because, not only are the illustrations, compositions and colours wonderful, but the typography (both Hindi, Bengali [ed. thanks to kd for correcting me] and English) is equally beautiful and imaginative. I was even lucky enough to buy a few of the ones he had multiples of. Enjoy this small survey, and thanks Dave. Keep it up, and consider that Bollywood poster gallery!  Here’s a video about one of Dave Trattle’s photo projects: The Boxing Ladies.