A recent entry on Noisy Decent Graphics linked to a source of vintage rail posters. It reminded me of a job I did a while back: We do a bit of work for one of Northern Ireland's oldest linen producers (they probably supplied the Titanic or something) who had an operation in India. They asked us to develop a piece of promotional literature that their sales guys could use as a leave-behind.
I had an idea to hark back to bygone days of travel and researched vintage travel posters. This one stood out as particularly suitable and I showed the client. They loved it. I explained how we would commission an illustrator to create something in the same style but with modified subject matter.
Big mistake.
Generally, the artists that created these wonderful things were highly skilled and would have spent a considerable amount of time on each piece; in the days when everything took longer than it does today. Our illustrator tried hard but just couldn't match the sheer quality of the drawing. She gave up!
After a momentary panic, it struck me: Why don't we just use the image we'd already shown the client? A little more research brought me to Science and Society. This is a fantastic image library of both photographic work, posters and advertising. Amongst all the other stuff they look after, they represent the party that own the rights to all these old rail posters. They don't even cost that much to license them either.
One small problem: although they thought they held electronic versions of almost everything, and what they didn't have they could find, they couldn't find mine.
I'd found it on All Posters, an american poster site which although has a lot of trashy stuff also has loads of brilliant vintage posters, like these:
We ordered our poster and photographed it. Even though they didn't actually have it on file, Science and Society still held the rights to it, so we paid a modest fee and got a license agreement off them. They were really nice to deal with.
So it all worked out nicely in the end: I was happy, the client was delighted and the piece went down very well. (Oh, and I got another entry for Ace Jet 170 out of it).
A great source for vintage posters is www.vintageposters.com
They sell only originals, not reproductions. Check out their site, you won't be sorry.
Posted by: liza | 11 October 2006 at 04:18 PM