Retro Design: Boomin’ Back Big

Part two: Graphic Design

Starting in the late 1990s and really picking up speed in the last two or three years, “retro” has come to mean a particular illustration and design “style” although it’s actually a mixture of several different styles reminiscent of the mid-1950s through early 1970s.

Walk into any card shop or paper store and you’re sure to find dozens of illustrated cards with a Boomer-era look and feel and lots of funny cards featuring photographs that seem to have been pulled from the back of your mother’s photo drawer. Some even include copies of photographs made to look like real Polariods adhered to the front of the card.

Wrapping paper, gift tags, calendars and gift bags sport images of Elvis, women with bouffants, poodles and tikki lanterns in bright colors. Retro colors tend to be vibrant, and it’s been said “brown is the new black.” You’ll see color combinations of brown and pink, brown and pale blue, brown and orange, although day-glo pink, orange, yellow and lime green seem to be everywhere as well.

Trends in graphic design

In an article about 2006 design trends, Step Inside Design magazine predicts that retro borrowing (from past styles) is fading, yet in the same article the author, Nancy Bernard, says “If I had to predict where illustration is going, I’d say it was to 1969. Mystical hippy styles appropriately updated, are very big in youth art. By ‘hippy’ I don’t mean op or pop. I mean art nouveau ornaments, layered up with rich, dreamlike imagery.” So, it looks like retro styles are here to stay for awhile.

The article goes on to point out that type styles today feature a lot of ‘60s kitch and groovy ‘70s. A look at a few type design sites reveals several “new” retro-style fonts (type faces) including those found on My Fonts called “Pink Martini,” “Orange Whip” and “Candy Square.” Font Diner specializes in retro-style fonts with names such as “Country Store,” "Motel King," “Chicken Basket” and “Cocktail Script.”

Illustrations of ‘50s and ‘60s icons and objects decorate cards, wrapping paper and quite a few book jackets these days. Cocktail imagery is big as are polka dots, stripes and paisleys. The scrap booking craze has joined with the retro craze resulting in many fun paper “scraps” featuring retro images as well.

Retro illustrators and designers

There are several “stars” in the retro design movement. An artist known simply as “Shag” started as a graphic designer illustrating greeting cards, wrapping paper and note cards but original paintings featuring his bon vivant, '50s-inspired style now hang in galleries around the world.

Kerry Beary is another illustrator/designer whose work has a fun, very retro feel.

Connecting to our present with our past

Why retro? Some in the greeting card industry say it appeals to Boomers and the children of Boomers who are looking to recreate the way people connected to each other in the past. They say a real growth in sales of everyday cards reveals people want to reach out to each other more and nostalgic themes have a great draw.

—Betty

Check out these great links for places to find retro graphic items and more!

Retro Design part one – Housewares

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