Ever since I got a hold of my mom’s Brownie camera when I was about 5 I’ve been fascinated with old cameras. When I was a teenager I used to scour the thrift stores in search interesting looking old pieces. I didn’t care if they worked or not (although I did come across a few working cameras which I made pretty good use of when I went off to art school), it was more just the design of the things.
Depending on how one defines it, some would consider the cave paintings in Lascaux, France or the hieroglyphics of ancient Egypt could be considered graphic design. That poses a bit of a conundrum when it comes to exploring the, “history of graphic design” though! There is also a lot of cross over between design and art, even today.
Since I started up our tumblr account I’ve been looking through a lot more vintage examples of design and illustration. Recently I came across some wonderful examples in the form of classic movie posters. All of these were created the, “old-fashioned” way – by hand. No computer or digital layout. Designers had to be artists.
One of my favorite things to do is look at vintage design and illustration to gain new inspiration and to see what’s been done in the past in the realm of graphic design and illustration.
During a recent outing to a bunch of local thrift stores and sifting through vintage record albums I noticed that a whole lot of them included original illustration or artwork.
I recently came across a bunch of old Geocities screenshots lying around in a folder on my computer. I wanted to unearth these gems and share them with a wider audience. Sometimes it’s good to look back on what came before - mostly so that we don’t repeat horrible mistakes, but also to get a reference point.
Does anyone else remember the era of the cool, metal lunch box? Any cartoon, movie, tv show, etc. that a kid was into inevitably would crack out a lunch box right around “back to school” season.
Don’t take this the wrong way. Search engine optimization is a useful tool. It helps businesses get their message out and stay one step ahead of the competition. For someone shopping online, it usually brings what they’re looking for right to the head of the queue and saves a lot of time. SEO is an important part of the internet and it’s here to stay. You’ll get no argument from me on any of that.
Today, there are more websites than ever before. There are row upon row of business sites, a cacophony of blogs, news sites to match every ideology, and plenty of sites best left unmentioned. Yet there’s one kind of website that used to be abundant, but now seems to be disappearing.
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