Vintage Travel Posters

As you may well know (we don’t talk about it much) we have been inspired by vintage travel posters for this year’s calendar. The blocks of rich colour have captured our imaginations as much as those first holiday makers who elegantly alighted from a train to a seaside shore, or headed to the rolling hills in a desire to escape the modern metropolis.

We thought this week we would show you some of the posters that inspired us.

Of course it isn’t just Cornwall that used these works of art, the rest of England and the world did too. Famous views were captured, enhanced and frozen in time.

Rich earthy hues are layered to great effect.

The colours in this poster for Hornsea are just so captivating. The epitome of style and elegance, this 1930s poster would defiantly draw the crowds.

When we were designing ours, we took inspiration from the huge blocks of colour that dominate the illustrations. The cliffs here are beautifully striped.

Scale and perspective are used to great effect. A celebration of the new and the ancient.

Expertly chosen colours provided much inspiration for our calendar design.

Its not just the travel posters that caught our imagination, the saturated and gloriously day-glo illustrations of Brian Cook for Batsford book jackets in the 1930s, 40s and 50s also caught our eye – how could they not!

Choosing the locations was hard, there are so many iconic shots in Cornwall, the county is so diverse and engaging. Once we had selected the 12 areas next we needed to illustrate them. The originals would have been hand coloured, but with the aid of the computer we drew shapes and layered them on top of each other. We wanted rich luxurious shades to lift off the page, to represent these locations beyond how they looked, but how they made us feel. The romance, the excitement, that breath of fresh air.

We have created each month as a free calendar download which you can get here if you like. You can also check out our past endeavours – time travel, dictionary definitions and iconic chairs to name just a few!

You can find these posters and more on our Pinterest board.