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 to “Design Inspiration: Early 20th Century Posters”

    1. 1 MyAvatars 0.2 Laura

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

    2. 2 MyAvatars 0.2 Lisa

      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. 3 MyAvatars 0.2 Neil

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

    4. 4 MyAvatars 0.2 Jennifer

      Beautiful. They truly are works of art.

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

    5. 5 MyAvatars 0.2 Jaypee

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

    6. 6 MyAvatars 0.2 alternative clothing

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

    7. 7 MyAvatars 0.2 Sheila

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

    8. 8 MyAvatars 0.2 Sleeping Dude

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

    9. 9 MyAvatars 0.2 Kymberlyn

      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. 10 MyAvatars 0.2 Dama Fortuna

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