A few months ago I went to the history museum in Birmingham and was mulling around their gift shop when I saw a set of ’scrapbooks’ - they had 50’s, 60’s, 70’s and I believe 40’s also, but really it was the 50’s and 60’s that I loved the most, and so I bought them.

The image above is as photograph taken by me one of their internal pages, and below are a few extra images from the 1950’s book, which is my favourite out of the two.

What has struck me about the books is the extensive use of illustration in advertising during these decades. They had photography just as we do now, but seemed to favour illustrations for most forms of advertising, which isn’t the case today.

Below, a collection from the typical 1950’s home;

The books have been compiled by Robert Opie and contain over 1000 products and images, and so are a great inspiration to a designer, especially as most of the images we see around us are of current day design…it’s great to look to the past sometimes for inspiration also.

Looking at the back cover, one can also purchase Victorian, Edwardian, 1910’s, 1920’s, 1930’s and Wartime scrapbooks. You can visit the Robert Opie website and purchase books online at;
http://www.robertopiecollection.com/Application/Products/Opie/books1GB.asp

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 25th, 2007 at 7:51 pm and is filed under Design Inspiration. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.