New Things in Old Packages: Vintage-Inspired Design
CC Image – GT Cool Mints Packaging by Marcel Buerkle on Behance – source
In an age of glass-and-metal consumer electronics, it is surprising that designers are mining the past for inspiration. Just recently, a French cosmetics company launched a toiletries line that drew attention for its packaging which resembles that of bath products sold in France during the 1920s. The packaging design for Les Société Parisienne de Savons is distinctly French Art Deco: bold typography and geometrically rendered floral ornamentation. To ensure the accuracy of the design, illustrator {Daniel Pelavin} had on hand old pieces of actual product labels from the 1920s.
On the other hand, Rachel Groves designed an Art Deco poker cards. While Pelavin went for honest-to-goodness replication, Groves opted for simple inspiration. The bold typography and the geometric patterns on the background bring to mind ad posters from the 1940s. The overlapping squares and the sharp contrast between dark and soft hues create an illusion of depth and fluid movement similar to that of the user interface of a Mac. Groves’s work with her Art Deco poker cards is very much like the evolution of poker itself. Poker continuously yields to the changes brought about by time. Poker travelled from France to America through the French settlers in Louisiana during the 19th century. It was originally a 20-card game of four players. From plain businessmen to treasure hunters, the game would be avidly played by people from all walks of life in the young American nation. Today, in the 21st century, poker is once again riding the waves of change, with the coming of online poker sites like http://www.partypoker.fr/. Like poker, art deco also originated in France. The aesthetic style started sometime in the 1910s and became popular until the 1940s. Simple lines, symmetrical shapes and a two-dimensional silhouette are the defining features of art deco, which is often thought to be a reaction against the earlier and more extravagant Art Noveau.
While the style in the US is characterized by perfectly balanced shapes with little or no embellishment at all, Art Deco in France is more voluptuous, combining severe industrial lines with ornamentation culled from Egyptian, Chinese, and African traditional arts. Art experts say that this fascination with faraway cultures was brought about by technological advancements in transportation of and communication time. It was common then among the French to go on luxury trips to Asia and Africa.
Here lies the charm of these vintage-inspired packaging. They elicit in the consumer a longing for long-gone days, those wonder-filled days of discovery and invention. Owning a vintage item is “like finding a treasure,” as what perfume retailer Mia Clarke says in an interview in {How to Spend It} about vintage perfumes.
Writing about Pelavin’s work for Savons in {The Atlantic}, arts professor Steven Heller says: “Nostalgia is a potent aphrodisiac, and nostalgia for times and places that one has not actually experienced has incredible allure.” An aphrodisiac indeed, for what could be more desirable than the unattainable?
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