Design Inspiration: Early 20th Century Posters

Jul 13, 2007   Inspiration 

Of all periods of graphic design, my favorite has to be the early 20th century.  I love the use of color, and  the typography is just beautiful.  Recently I’ve found a nice source of inspiration in that vein at InternationalPoster.com where there is a huge collection of vintage posters searchable by subject, period, style, artist, etc.  They also have a very interesting history of poster art to peruse. Some of my favorite finds there:

 vintage poster 1

Artist: Mario Borgoni

vintage poster 2

Artist: Henry Le Monnier

vintage poster 3

Artist: unknown (hmmmm, maybe he went down with the ship)

vintage poster 4

Artist: Joseph Leyendecker

Artist: Antonius Molkenboer

What about you? What period of design most inspires you?

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10 Responses

  1. Laura says:
    July 13, 2007 at 11:05 am

    I love old posters! Thanks for pointing me to this site.

  2. Lisa says:
    July 13, 2007 at 12:31 pm

    I have the Titanic one!

    I love any kind of pin-up art. That’s always been my favorite. In fact, I have three pin-up ad posters that I need to get framed so we can hang them!

  3. Neil says:
    July 14, 2007 at 2:06 am

    I love the exact same period. It makes modern day advertising illustration look pale in comparison.

  4. Jennifer says:
    July 17, 2007 at 6:05 am

    Beautiful. They truly are works of art.

    Poster number two – Tobler must have been created for the world’s first Duty Free shop …

  5. Jaypee says:
    July 17, 2007 at 6:53 am

    Cool posters! Thanks for sharing the site. I like the Tobler and Titanic posters. :)

  6. alternative clothing says:
    July 21, 2007 at 3:54 am

    thanks for sharing the site! i absolutely love old vintage posters!!! :)

  7. Sheila says:
    July 25, 2007 at 3:49 pm

    Very cool vintage posters! I love the old typography, too.

  8. Sleeping Dude says:
    July 26, 2007 at 2:25 am

    Titanic is awesome… wonder if it’s true old poster, or someone created it after it sunk

  9. Kymberlyn says:
    July 31, 2007 at 9:32 pm

    Another great resource for old illustrations, advertisements etc is the library of congress. You can search their database. They’ve got a lot of neat stuff- some of which is public domain.

  10. Dama Fortuna says:
    December 23, 2007 at 5:30 pm

    I love these vintage posters. Thank you for posting them!

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