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1960s had some of the most interesting design. The typography and photography really pushed design in a beautiful direction. These 1960s Life Science book covers and graphics bring on such a wave of nostalgia. The typeface used in these was perfect.
Shared from AquaVelvet.
For such a self destructive product, the packaging design is rather good. It was originally designed by George Tscherny for Lark Cigarettes in 1968. For designs like this it would be interesting to see before and after sales among other things to figure out why the design style never stuck.
Expo 67 is perhaps my most favorite event of the 60s. The exhibition was open from April 28th to October 27th in Montreal, Quebec, Canada and located on two islands and a peninsula in the middle of the St. Lawrence River.
View many more of the postcards here.
The “Kitchen Satellite” by Luici Colani in 1968-1971 was designed to hang like a satellite outside a complimentary ellipse-shaped residential module. As you sit or stand inside the kitchen, everything is at arms length supposedly making everything easier. I don’t know about that, but the concept and color are very intriguing.
Shared via ISO50
Sainsbury’s was founded in 1869 and has become the third largest chain of supermarkets in the United Kingdom. Sainsbury’s great in-house design team in the 60s and 70s produced these beautiful packaging samples.
If you get Creative Review, check out the September addition for an article about a new book by Fuel about the team and the approach behind the designs—buy the book here.
The 1963 Aarnio ball chair designed by Eero Aarnio is one of the most iconic and comfortable chairs. Not only do the inner cushions fit perfectly to your back, but when sitting in the chair the sound is dampened greatly. It feels as if you’ve extracted all those extra imposing noises. The chair is sometimes described as a “room within a room” because of this.
After spending a day sitting in one much alike pictured here, I’m sold—I would personally buy one in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, your hefty deposit of $6,860 won’t speed up the 8-12 week delivery.
Words from Aarnio about the chair:
The idea of the chair was very obvious. We had moved to our first home and I had started my free-lance career in 1962. We had a home but no proper big chair, so I decided to make one, but some way a really new one.
After some drawing I noticed that the shape of the chair had become so simple that it was merely a ball. I pinned the full scale drawing on the wall and sat in the chair to see how my head would move when sitting inside it. Being the taller one of us I sat in the chair and my wife drew the course of my head on the wall. This is how I determined the height of the chair. Since I aimed at a ball shape, the other lines were easy to draw, just remembering that the chair would have to fit through a doorway.
After this I made the first prototype myself using an inside mould, which has been made using the same principle as a glider fuselage or wing. I covered the plywood body mould with wet paper and laminated the surface with fiberglass, rubbed down the outside, removed the mould from inside, had it upholstered and added the leg. In the end I installed the red telephone on the inside wall of the chair. The naming part of the chair was easy, the BALL CHAIR was born.
It’s hard to imagine such beautiful labels being printed so small. The illustrations were done for the Tokyo Olympic Games in 1964. Tokio is the Polish spelling. They would make great posters if blown up wall-size.
Found on Flickr
Australian based architecture firm MCK Architects, dubbed this home the “Flipped House” for the reason that they’d literally flipped the original house plan and outdoor elements to create a more systematic cohesion of the interior and exterior. The original home was built in the 1960’s but was dated. Some of the original fixtures still remain in use in this new version.
Found on Arch Daily / photography by Willem Rethmeier
Jean Philippe Lenclos was a young French man born in 1938. During his travels he became very interested in symbolism and color theory which led to him writing a theory based on the Geography of Color. In an interview in the book Supergraphics, which I suggest buying from Unit Editions, he talks about the differences in the appreciation of color and the use in changing consumers’ behavior.
The work of Lenclos is very intriguing to me. Something amidst the lines and geometric shapes lies the honesty in his design.
Each one of these mid-century modern graphic illustrations incorporates a combination of pure geometric patterns. These once meaningful shapes and concepts sold products. It is my hope that by continuously revisiting these minimalistic visuals, we’ll begin to adopt the ideals of not overcomplicating our design.
Found on Sandiv’s photostream
This is the second post of beautiful vintage packaging this week. Still hard to believe and a shame that this is a dying breed of design. These pieces were found on Tom Crabtree’s photostream.
Remember to View the rest after the jump.
Gold strike! It’s very hard to believe that this older, more beautiful design has fallen by the wayside. Also it is entirely unfortunate that there are a very few amount of designers today that still produce respectable results similar to the pieces shown here. Some of the pieces were for Graphis, but some are unknown. If you know, the original designers or sources let us know. Take a moment or several moments, and soak up these amazing pieces brought to us by Tom Crabtree.
Make sure to view the rest of the designs after the jump—they only get better!
