Some Inspiration

A number of months ago I attended the FITC conference in Toronto and one of the seminars I attended was by Scott Hansen. Check out his blog. One the things that really struck me about his talk was about how he found his inspiration. He referred a lot to the old broadcaster promos of the 60s and 70s and the bright animated colours. He also showed a lot of examples of album cover artwork, some of which he designs himself. I really liked his take on album artwork because I am one of those who needs to have the artwork whenever I download an album off iTunes. I guess it is the nostalgic part of me. Growing up there was something special about buying an album and listening to it to first time while exploring the cover art. This is a ritual that seems lost in the digital age.

More importantly, what I was left with from that talk was a question about what artwork over the years has inspired me. The more I thought about it, I kept coming back to the old WW2 propaganda artwork. I think it started in University where a roommate had gathered a number of posters from his trip to the Imperial War Museum in London. We had all these poster with some really nostalgic artwork and slogans like, "Wings of Victory" and "There will always be a Britain". It always kind of stayed with me since WW2 history has always been a hobby.

Now that I work in the Ad business I look back at these posters, the medium of the time, and think, "These posters were ahead of their time." This was well before Mad Men. Think about it in today's advertising terms. Compelling imagery, Inspiring message associated with an obvious cause, and a clear call to action. Pretty powerful stuff. I should also acknowledge that there were a lot of racist and sexist aspects of the posters of the time but that is not the point.

The imagery of that time period is something I have always liked and in today's terms is still pretty powerful print advertising. The pioneers of Mad Men. What inspires you?