Ultra Swank - Retro Adventures

Design • advertising • interior • architecture

Vintage or Reproduction – Do you need to make a choice?

When it comes to the choice of reproduction or vintage I find that a mixture of reproduction furniture and clothing is often better way to go. Many years ago I was convinced that the only way of life was with vintage clothing and furniture, and lets face it, it’s truly marvellous because you are taking a piece of history and recycling and re using it...

Men Who Plan Beyond Tomorrow!
Written by James Vaughan in Advertising

Men Who Plan Beyond Tomorrow!

What were they thinking? These planners of a future, that was so futuristic, it was even ‘beyond’ tomorrow? Were these marvels of a better world to come? Or did they drink too much of their beloved Seagram’s whiskey before they sat down at their drawing boards? To be sure; many of the marvels forecast in Seagram’s 1940’s series of magazine advertisements have come true. Cell...

The Modern Bachelor Pad
Written by Koop Kooper in Interior

The Modern Bachelor Pad

Back in the 1960′s there were many bachelor pad films about and one of the key fantasy parts of this model was the fully decked out, technologically advanced bachelor pads. The reality of these films that it was pretty much impossible for the average guy to have one of these bachelor pads. Sure there might have been some rich guys who might have had access...

We Go to the Moon! – The Art of Robert McCall

“We choose to go to the moon, not because it is easy, but because it is hard!” John F. Kennedy, Sept. 12, 1962. Rice University, Texas. Huh! What did he say? President Kennedy’s speech, kicking off the Space Race, was inspired words. But everyone knows the real reason we went to the moon. We went because it was COOL! What showed us how cool it really was...

Fashion and Fun Plus Bubbly Sweet Drinks

There are few examples in advertising or pop-culture which are the idealization of American youth, affluence and style, better than the Pepsi print campaigns of the 1950’s. These magazine illustrations clearly marked out a sophisticated lifestyle and the beautiful stylish people that practiced it. The artistic style was colorful and simple with a few important details to tell the story. The setting was clearly urban,...

Eastern European Movie Posters from the Past

Here is your chance to score some really cool looking vintage movie posters from the past. Eye Sea Posters sources original vintage film posters from around the world and makes them available at reasonable prices. Their collection is handpicked with an emphasis on design. They specialize in Polish and Turkish film posters from the 1960s and 1970s by artists like Jerzy Flisak, Wiktor Gorka, Andrzej...

How to Create Vintage Looking Posters

Here is a handy guide written by Roger 99 that shows us how to create old-fashioned posters with that special vintage look, complete with aged paper feel. The tutorial explains in detail using a step-by-step guide how a advertisement for Facebook could have looked if it was available in the 1950s. There are also examples of YouTube, Twitter and Skype included. Read the tutorial here...

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