Posts in Random Nostalgia

I got my first couple days of skiing for the season in last week right after some nice snow up at Heavenly. Skiing always reminds me of being really young and going up with my parents, Sacramento is only an hour from the Sierras so we’d get up a few times a year. I loved all the design associated with ski equipment and I found that when I first started out in design I was always trying to emulate that style in my work.

My latest trip got me thinking about vintage ski graphics so I set out to track down some good examples. Most of what I found were from magazine ads, this first set focuses on racing imagery. I’ll be posting some more in the days to come, hope you enjoy this first batch.

So we all download and save images of items, graphics and photos from the internet daily and some of the time you have no idea where to give credit besides maybe the guy that posted it first or second randomly on a blog. I‘d like to get some answers on a few of these but also just post some interesting pieces that we come across that might have been sitting on our drives for awhile that are go to for inspiration or just found randomly on a forum with no info attached and just look great. Either way hopefully the point that gets across here is that they are inspiring in some sort of way to you as well.

For the 3 images up here: the first one I have a feeling is Will Calcutt’s who takes photos for Ghostly International but I have no proof either way it’s an intense shot, nothing like the average landscape shots you see these days. The second one I just wanted to know what is going on, is this a operator jail? The third one I like only in a Royksopp cute kinda of way, a bit amateur in parts and wears his influences on his sleeve and it feels abit unfinished but I enjoy the colors and shapes of the “mum like” mountains.

Sad to think that never again will we ever get to discover such a look and feel in a TV show, elegance and hi end style in the aesthetics won’t ever reach this level again, especially with what is on TV now.

The Prisoner – Opening Credits

Here is the 4th installment of “Images From Where? and By Who?” So we all download and save images of items, graphics and photos from the internet daily and some of the time you have no idea where to give credit besides maybe the guy that posted it first or second randomly on a blog. I ‘d like to get some answers on a few of these but also just post some interesting pieces that we come across that might have been sitting on our drives for awhile that are go to for inspiration or just found randomly on a forum with no info attached and just look great. Either way hopefully the point that gets across here is that they are inspiring in some sort of way to you as well.

The first one has to be my favorite album cover of all time but only when someone takes a photo of the vinyl sleeve and it catches this pearly yet worn look and then a slight hue of yellow over the whole thing. Who ever thought of the idea of simply just photographing this white helmet but having that mirrored visor wins an award in my book.

I remember finding this NASA illustration and it inspiring me a lot for awhile for Moodgadget material, I could of gone without the blue and orange crayon background.

I am pretty sure this “cubes on a waterfall” was an advertisement and if it was i’ll buy whatever they’re selling…especially the cubes.

Dusty was over tonight and we were listening to some Datasette. That along with Jakub’s mention of Jason Cawood’s excellent “Salvaged” set on Flickr got me thinking I need to do a post on both. So it is; most of the songs were cut from Datasette mixtapes by Dusty so they don’t really have official names that I know of.

Datasette – Business Funk 1

Datasette – Business Funk 2

Datasette – Business Funk 3

Datasette – Minus Fourteen

Just a small collection of oil company maps I’ve found around the web; I wasn’t aware of this fascinating sub-genre of design. This is the sort of throw-away stuff that for some reason is the coolest thing to find in the garage drawer it’s been sitting in for 30 years. I think that Hawaii one is actually just a Casino Versus Japan 12″ cover. That German one is ridiculous; leave it to them to design a map that they give out free at the gas station that betters the collective output of United State graphic designers for the entire calendar year in which it was produced. Way to go guys.

Sources:
Shell Nature Lovers’ Atlas
Shell Deutschland Map
Mobil Travel Map
Shell Hawaii Map

Things to Look At has a great post on Vintagecalculators.com. They’ve got plenty of adverts and pictures of old school adding machines. I have an old 70’s TI from my dad I should get it out and dust it off. Jakub also has a couple if I remember correctly.

I’ve posted on Expo 67 before but it’s so good I thought it was time to bring it up again for the uninitiated. Alamedinfo has what looks like the full collection of Expo67 postcards from the Montreal World’s Fair. I will never get over this style, it’s just so perfectly executed. It says a lot about the spirit of an age when they had such fanciful visions of the future. Of course, it could be that very kind of irrational exuberance that landed us where we’re at now — and it’s probably a good thing given way to a more pragmatic vision — but it’s still nice to look back and smile. Link

I’ve been following Dan McPharlin’s work for a few years now, ever since his miniature synthesizer models started showing up on Matrixsynth. I fell in love with his perfectly crafted, perfectly photographed (seriously, the photography is almost cooler than the work itself) paper music machines. But after being introduced to his graphic/illustration work he quickly became one of my favorite artists. His illustrations are very reminiscent of another favorite of mine, Roger Dean, and are evocative of that prog-rock driven 70’s sci-fi art scene that, when done right, is just downright incredible.

So it’s been great to see Dan’s work start popping up all over the place, like here, here (Prefuse 73 cover), and here (Jakub, you really should have know better!). Beyond the visual beauty of his work, it’s just great to see someone being creative with such a novel medium. He brings the mind and eye of a designer to a world previously reserved for 60-somethings hiding out in their basements building model railroads. To see him wrap all this up and successfully translate that future-past-that-never-was aesthetic into commercial projects is a good thing indeed.

You can check out more of Dan’s work at his flickr.

On a side note, he’s posted some shots of his home/work-space here. Are you kidding? Amazing. My house looks like it was built of scraps from a 19th-century Troller Boat that ran aground in front of a hippie commune. Seriously, parts of a boat were used in the construction of this house, I am sure of it. Anyways, I am disorganized at best, slovenly at worst and I don’t think I have the skill set to keep such a meticulously minimalist situation like that up for any length of time. If I win the lottery I will get one of those modernist prefabs and put it in front of this house. I’ll then carefully place completely unusable angular furniture and German-designed objects all around it. Finally I will place a single synthesizer with wooden endbells and an analog sequencer on a white table with a molded plywood chair in front of it. When people come over I will tell them that’s where I get all my work done and then I will sit them down at a walnut coffee table with various important looking design books stacked neatly on top of it and expound on typography theory and then chastise them for not understanding the difference between kerning and leading. After they leave I will go back to my real house and eat a sandwich in my basement and watch Adult Swim and then not clean up the plate for a week or so.

These pin-ups are from the amazing Vintage Knob collection. There’s plenty more of these to see over there along with the more basic fare: close-ups of audio/visual equipment sans hot girls. That Marconi one up there is the best thing I’ve seen in a while; wall size print coming up as soon as they deliver the 9900. Seeing stuff like this always gives me mixed feelings. It just reminds me of the wealth of beautiful images out there that are just lost to time. Can you imagine being able to get the original negatives to these shots and do serious enlargements? It’s nice that sites like The Vintage Knob are making these available in some form, but 72dpi Jpegs just don’t cut it for print output.