Vintage Typography

Typography is one of my favorite themes, so I don’t know why it took me weeks to decide on what to do for my heARTist Trading ATCs. There were so many directions within typography that I tried three or four approaches, but nothing was really working. 

My family has been watching the old 1970s PBS show “Upstairs, Downstairs”, so I wanted to do something with the Art Nouveau style. I puttered for hours with Nouveau-inspired fonts and played with letters, words, and fabric designs in Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator without too much success. Next, inspired by the work of artist Lisa Occhipinti, I used portions of the swoop of a Q, Z and M Art Nouveau backgrounds, an antique beach, and my own designs—without success.

So, I went back to my old favorite—vintage advertising, and layered Graphics Fairy http://thegraphicsfairy.com/ and other antique images in Photoshop to create this month’s ATCs. I tried about 50 different ideas, and printed the five styles I liked best. I surrounded a Pears Soap ad with text about cleanliness and beauty in an old west-inspired font. The Monaco-Monte-Carlo card was the only one in an Art Nouveau style; I layered a Mucha poster on one of my own designs. The beehive/rose, bird in an envelope and French advertising all multiple vintage images that were layered and softened in Photoshop.