Ultra Swank - Retro Adventures

Design • advertising

Vintage Volvos
Written by Christopher in Advertising

Vintage Volvos

Moving back to Sweden again for a while and more specifically to the Swedish automotive industry. For those who aren’t in the know, Sweden has two major brands; Volvo and Saab. Today we are going back to the mid 1950s to look at how the advertisements for model 121 also known as the Amazon were portrayed in the country that brought you all ABBA, IKEA...

Video
Written by Christopher in Advertising

Welcome to the world of TWA

Here’s a glimpse into the wonderful world of now defunct Trans World Airlines (TWA). I love the catchy and somewhat cheesy 1960s theme song! The video could use some color correction obviously seeing it has degraded quite a lot over the years, but who cares. Following that video is a promotion of Boeing’s new 747 airliner with what looks like Trans World’s livery. I can’t...

Video

Enjoy this fun and swanky Ford commercial from 1960 linking new compact cars to futurism and the space frontier. They don’t make commercials like this anymore, do they? If you like this, there is a ton of more of old commericals and archive footage to be found in the Prelinger Archives at the ever so great archive.org website....

Attention all Customers – The Art of Lettering

I am not only interested in vintage design, architecture, lounge music and stewardesses but also graphic design and typography seeing I majored in it in college and nowadays what I make a living from. One thing that caught my attention lately are those old handwritten posters and placates that were found in major stores and outlets. Handwritten of course, they were in their own way...

Video
Written by Christopher in Advertising

Fly the Friendly Skies

Remember what is was like before Southwest Airlines? Well, I don’t. But it looks all good to me. Here are two early 1970s ads from the Dallas based airline Southwest Airlines and Miami based National Airlines. Both rather sexist, created to attract the attention of male passengers using tightly fitted outfits on the stewardesses along with broadcast and print campaigns suggesting that you could “fly”...

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