Nostalgic Gift for Designers
Quite simply we crave nostalgia. As Jonathan Ford writes in his STEP inside design article titled Brand Nostalgia, "people are looking to the past for answers, certainty, and fulfillment." Especially around this time of year we selectively reminisce about the good ole days and buy products that help reconnect us to the past. And it's up to designers to visually recreate these eras. But where can designers find a condensed reference to the past, a quick source for inspiration?
Of course we can search the Internet for information and piece together data from various Web sites or sift through large collections of print material, but the other day I discovered Remember When KardLets from Nashville-based Seek Publishing.
A 5x8 24-page full color KardLet exists for each year between 1930 and 2001 and contains news, sports, facts, Hollywood
highlights, a calendar, and a price index of cars, houses, milk and gas. Actual magazine ads from the selected year are also featured.
The book is well laid out, presenting textual information in list form using large serif type, generous amounts of leading, and prudent use of italics, bold, underlining and ornamentation. The full color ads, which reside on almost every other page, provide visual relief to the text as well as a decent sampling of some mainstream graphic design styles of the time.
So if you're tackling a project that requires the recreation of a bygone era, or you're racing around looking for a last minute office gift for a colleague, you may want to consider a Remember When KardLet. I bought mine at a local furniture/gift store, but I've also seen them at various Hallmark shops. You can also buy them at the appropriately named Web site memoryroad.com.
Leave a comment