Milan, Italy

Franco Brambilla likes to mix nostalgia from the past with cute aliens and beings from Sci Fi movies. See lots more of his creations in this genre here…

New York, USA

Bernarr Macfadden started Physical Culture magazine in March of 1899, his first publishing venture (based on a personal interest in bodybuilding)—it quickly became the most successful of a variety of new publications about health, fitness, exercise, and physical development. Magazine content included serious information, fads, fiction, attractive models in scanty sporting costumes, and pages of advertising aimed at “the active and those who wished they were.”

Shown above are some of the illustrated covers from the 1910s… view hundreds of others here.

(from a nice collection of German graphic art, found here)

London, UK

Mark Powell is an artist who draws with Biro pens (ballpoints) on old envelopes and such… he hails from Leeds and he often runs into the sea. That’s about all I know about him—other than that I really like his illustrative technique. See more of his Biro-portraits here.

(Thanks to Zelda Harrison for the link).

Nizhniy Novgorod, Russia

Nikita Nomerz is a graffiti and street artist who brings derelict buildings to life with his whimsical characters.

(source)

San Francisco, California

Brent Couchman is a contemporary illustrator/designer with a stylish mid-century modern flare—see more of his work here and here.

Thanks to Carole Guevin for the cue.

New York, USA

Henry Wolf was an Austrian-born American graphic designer, photographer and art director best known for his art direction of Esquire, Harper’s Bazaar, and Show magazines in the 1950s and ’60s—an influential contributor to that Mid-Century Modern era whose style has enjoyed such a resurgence in popularity of late. In particular, he is known for his bold yet simple use of expressive typography, surreal photography, and conceptual illustration.

Henry was born in 1925 in Vienna, Austria, from which he and his Jewish family fled the Nazis beginning in 1938, traveling through France and North Africa, before arriving to the United States in 1941. He worked with photographers Richard Avedon, Melvin Sokolsky, and Art Kane before launching his own photography studio in New York’s Upper East Side.

He became art director of Esquire in 1952; in 1958 he became the art director of Harper’s Bazaar (succeeding Alexey Brodovitch); and in 1961 he started a new magazine, Show, for A&P heir Huntington Hartford. In 1965 he moved over to the advertising world where he directed numerous high-profile campaigns. In 1971 he launched Henry Wolf Productions, a studio devoted to photography, film, and design. In later years he taught graphic design at Parsons School of Design in New York, as well as the School of Visual Arts, and Cooper Union.

Henry was honored with many awards, but more importantly, he was admired by colleagues, peers, and competitors alike. Read a biography written my Milton Glaser here and view collections of his works here.

(source)

There’s a stark, graphic beauty to be found in vintage matchbox labels… resulting from the bold design approach needed to accommodate a combination of coarse and absorbent substrates, low-resolution printing techniques, and a limited color palette (often muted, and often printed out of register). Shown above are a few samples of Eastern European designs from the 1950s and 1960s.

View hundreds more here.

(riding back in time)

There’s something about Vespa that takes me back… recognized as the epitome of Italian design, manufactured in the tens of millions, and distributed to almost every corner of the earth, this iconic, curvaceous little scooter from the 1940s has carved out a niche meme for itself that has survived six decades of the “information age” in style.

I first rode a Vespa (Italian for “wasp”) during driver training and then tested on it for my German motorcycle license in 1972. Nowadays, it’s relatively easy to find fine collections of vintage Vespa images online (calendars were popular for half a century), such as here.