Vintage Travel Poster Color
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I've been color tripping with some vintage, art deco travel posters from the 1930’s. Come along....
Today, destinations visually lure us with lush, full color photography in vivid colors. But look back 40 and 50 years and you’ll see the delightful graphic approach to travel advertising, with its unusual hues and bold designs.
Art deco posters were often silkscreened, which produces flat masses of color with either no shading, or textures to visually model forms. The silkscreening process limits the palette because each color is a pass of ink through the silkscreen. Sometimes graduated tones were created by surprinting one color on top of another, leading to unusual hues which naturally harmonize. There’s a geometric feel to the overall design, with shapes often outlined in a darker color, or delineated by hard edges.
The “Firenze” poster invites us to Florence with an oddly appealing palette based on mutations of the red/green combination. Everything is flat except the top of the dome, which uses stippling to round its shape. A touch of gold is the liveliest color in the scheme. Look in the foreground, just behind the text... what an unusual black shape suggesting houses! I like it!
The rich color scheme of the Hotel Excelsior toys with depth of field by placing subdued colors in front of the brightest orange in the background. These mysterious shrouded figures and the domed archway add to the intrigue that the word “Casablanca” conjures.
The brightest colors of any of this genre I’ve seen are those of the Le Grand Hotel poster. Its contemporary purples, oranges and yellow are the exception to the muted and pastels most often used. The terra cotta brown on the right side of the statue gives depth to these brights, tying them all together.
I’ve pulled color palettes out of each poster for you and placed them just beneath the image. I welcome you to use the palettes any way you want and please send me a digital photo of your creation.
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