Alexander Calder’s Iconic Flying Colors Series for Braniff Airlines in the 1970s

In the early 1973, Braniff Airlines commissioned Alexander Calder to paint one of their aircrafts to celebrate twenty-five years of travel to South America. Excited by the prospect of his artwork literally flying around the world, Calder accepted and submitted designs to cover a Douglas DC-8-62. The finished craft, named The Flying Colors of South America featured a bold design in primary colors, executed by a paint crew with Calder attending to the details and additional flourishes—including his trademark “Beasties” which were painted on the engines.

The present work depicts one of these stylized creatures printed to commemorate the project. The aircraft was unveiled at the 1975 Pairs Air Show and made such an impression that Braniff commissioned two more planes, both Boeing 727s. Calder completed The Flying Colors of the United States featuring an abstract American Flag in time for the 1976 Bicentennial. Alas, the artist did not live to complete the third aircraft, The Spirit of Mexico.

Alexander Calder (July 22, 1898 – November 11, 1976) was an American sculptor known both for his innovative mobiles (kinetic sculptures powered by motors or air currents) that embrace chance in their aesthetic, and static “stabiles” monumental public sculptures. He didn’t limit his art to sculptures; he also created paintings, jewelry, theatre sets and costumes.

Calder preferred not to analyze his work, saying, “Theories may be all very well for the artist himself, but they shouldn’t be broadcast to other people.”

Born into a family of artists, Calder’s work first gained attention in Paris in the 1920s and was soon championed by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, resulting in a retrospective exhibition in 1943. Major retrospectives were also held at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (1964) and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (1974).

Although primarily known for his sculpture, Calder also created paintings and prints, miniatures (such as his famous Cirque Calder), theater set design, jewelry design, tapestries and rugs, and political posters. He was honored by the US Postal Service with a set of five 32-cent stamps in 1998, and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, posthumously in 1977, after refusing to receive it from Gerald Ford one year earlier in protest of the Vietnam War.

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40 Amazing Vintage Posters in the 1920s and ’30s by Jean d’Ylen

Born 1886 in Paris as Jean Paul Beguin, French posterist Jean d’Ylen manifested his special talents for design at the age of twelve and won gold and silver medals from the Ville de Paris in 1898.

Posters in the 1920s and ’30s by Jean d’Ylen

In 1914, d’Ylen got married and joined the 279th Infantry Regiment. He then joined the Cartography Department of the Army. After the war, he quickly opted for a career in poster design. Vercassson were keen to sign him up and he joined the firm in 1919. They presented his work at the Salon de la Publicite. He had an exclusive contract with Vercasson for about thirty posters.

d’Ylen designed posters for Waterman, Ripolin, Jacquemaire, Shell, Bally and Sandeman’s Port. The posters were on advertising hoardings all over the walls of France. Soon his creations were scattered over Europe, England (by Weiner), Sweden, Holland, USA, Canada and Australia.

From 1934, a dispute with Vercasson, led him to work directly for Weiner in London. d’Ylen designed for Esso, BP, the Daily Herald, Power Ethyl and was widely recognized as a leader in his field.

In 1938, d’Ylen died prematurely, at the height of his career. His defining comment was in 1921, when he said, “A poster must be expressive, colorful and have an attraction which captures the attention of a passer by”.

Here is a set of amazing posters designed by Jean d’Ylen in the 1920s and 1930s.

Craven A, Cork Tipped Virginia Cigarettes, circa 1920s

Danse de Moscou, 1920

Krema, Le Meilleur Bonbon au Beurre, circa 1920s

Ripolin paints, circa 1920s

Fiorino Asti Spumante, 1922

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The Man Who Shot the Seventies: Stunning Photographs of Rock Stars Taken by Mick Rock

The legendary rock photographer Mick Rock, often referred as “The Man Who Shot the Seventies,” has died aged 72. The news was confirmed by his representative in a statement that described Rock as a “photographic poet” and “a true force of nature who spent his days doing exactly what he loved, always in his own delightfully outrageous way”.

Mick Rock (November 22, 1948 – November 18, 2021) photographed rock music acts such as Queen, David Bowie, T. Rex, Syd Barrett, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop and The Stooges, The Sex Pistols, Ozzy Osbourne, The Ramones, Joan Jett, Talking Heads, Roxy Music, Thin Lizzy, Geordie, Mötley Crüe, and Blondie. Often referred to as “The Man Who Shot the Seventies,” most of the memorable shots of Bowie as Ziggy Stardust were shot by Rock in his capacity as Bowie’s official photographer.

During his time at Cambridge, Rock picked up a friend’s camera and started to take pictures of the local rock music scene, acquiring some friends and contacts along the way (including Cambridge native Syd Barrett and Mick Jagger’s younger brother Chris).

Rock’s career continued to soar with key 1970s images like Lou Reed’s Transformer, Iggy Pop’s Raw Power and Queen’s Queen II and many of the Sex Pistols’ infamous shots. In 1977, he moved permanently to New York, where he quickly became involved with the underground music scene pioneered by The Ramones, Talking Heads and Blondie. His pictures, including The Ramones’ End of the Century, captured the revolutionary spirit of this groundbreaking period and made him the one of the most sought-after photographers in the world.

His photo subjects include The Misfits, Snoop Dogg, Air Traffic, Maxwell, Alicia Keys, The Gossip, Lady Gaga, Richard Barone, The Killers, The Scissor Sisters, Michael Bublé, Miley Cyrus, Michael Stipe, Kate Moss, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Chemical Brothers, Janelle Monáe, Queens of the Stone Age, Daft Punk, Kasabian, Snow Patrol, Daniel Merriweather, Black Keys, Hall & Oates, Peter, Bjorn and John, MGMT, Alejandro Escovedo, Pete Yorn, Gavin Degraw, Peaches, Fat Joe, Rhymefest, Nas, Q-Tip, Jane’s Addiction, Tom Stoppard, and old friends Bowie, Lou Reed, Debbie Harry, Joan Jett, Mötley Crüe, Nicos Gun, and Iggy Pop.

His retrospective at Tokyo’s Metropolitan Museum of Photography in 2003 was hailed as “one of the most exciting exhibitions of pop culture imagery to ever reach these shores.” In late 2006, Mick Rock received the Diesel U Music Legends Award for his contribution to Music.

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Harvey Ross Ball: The Man Behind the Famous Smiley Face Symbol

Harvey Ross Ball (July 10, 1921 – April 12, 2001) was an American commercial artist. After World War II, Ball worked for a local advertising firm until he started his own business, Harvey Ball Advertising, in 1959. He designed the smiley in 1963.

The State Mutual Life Assurance Company of Worcester, Massachusetts had purchased Guarantee Mutual Company of Ohio. The merger resulted in low employee morale. In an attempt to solve this, Ball was employed in 1963 as a freelance artist, to come up with an image to increase morale. What he created was a smiley face, with one eye bigger than the other. In less than ten minutes, Harvey Ball came up with the simple yet world-changing smiley face. The simplicity of the image brought smiles to the faces of the executives, who paid him $45 (about $400 today) for his creation.

“I made a circle with a smile for a mouth on yellow paper, because it was sunshiny and bright,” he later told the Associated Press.

The use of the smiley face became part of the company’s friendship campaign whereby State Mutual handed out 100 smiley pins to employees. The aim was to get employees to smile while using the phone and doing other tasks. The buttons became popular, with orders being taken in lots of 10,000. More than 50 million smiley face buttons had been sold by 1971, and the smiley has been described as an international icon.

Ball never applied for a trademark or copyright of the smiley. State Mutual, similarly, did not make any money from the design. Ball’s son, Charles, is reported to have said his father never regretted not registering the copyright.

The phrase “Have a happy day” became associated with the smiley although it was not part of Ball’s original design. Philadelphian brothers Bernard and Murray Spain designed and sold products with the phrase and logo in the early 1970s. They trademarked the combination and later changed the phrase to “Have a nice day”, which itself has become a phrase in everyday use in North America.

The smiley was introduced to France in 1972 as a signal of a good news story in the newspaper France Soir. Frenchman Franklin Loufrani used the image this way and made swift moves to trademark the image. His company now turns over $100 million a year.

Ball founded the World Smile Foundation in 1999 a non-profit charitable trust that supports children’s causes. The group licenses Smileys and organizes World Smile Day, which takes place on the first Friday of October each year and is a day dedicated to “good cheer and good works”. The catchphrase for the day is “Do an act of kindness - help one person smile”.

Harvey Ball died on April 12, 2001 as a result of liver failure following a short illness. He was 79.

Propaganda Posters From World War I

World War I was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. Contemporaneously known as the Great War or “the war to end all wars”, it led to the mobilization of more than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, making it one of the largest wars in history, and also one of the deadliest conflicts in history, with an estimated 8.5 million combatant deaths and 13 million civilian deaths as a direct result of the war.

Propaganda posters from World War I

During World War I, the impact of the poster as a means of communication was greater than at any other time during history. The ability of posters to inspire, inform, and persuade combined with vibrant design trends to produce thousands of interesting visual works.

Here below is a set of amazing propaganda posters from World War I.

"Be yours to hold it high!", Buy Victory Bonds

"I Summon You to Comradeship in the Red Cross" Woodrow Wilson

Attendrons-Nous Que Les Nôtres Brûlent?, Bataillon Canadien Français

Books Wanted For Our Men In Camp And "Over There"

Britain Needs You At Once

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40 Amazing Posters Produced by and in Support of Spanish Republic (1931-1939)

The Spanish Republic, commonly known as the Second Spanish Republic, was the form of government in Spain from 1931 to 1939. The Republic was proclaimed on April 14, 1931, after the deposition of King Alfonso XIII and was dissolved on April 1, 1939 after surrendering in the Spanish Civil War to the Nationalists led by General Francisco Franco.

Spanish Republic posters

The Republican government survived in exile and retained an embassy in Mexico City until 1976. After the restoration of democracy in Spain, the government-in-exile formally dissolved the following year.

These amazing posters were produced by and in support of the Spanish Republic from 1931 to 1939.

La Idea, Diario de la Mañana, 1930

Día del Llibre, 1931

República Española, 1931

Estudios, 1933

Llegiu l'Opinió, 1933

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Wonderful Knapp-Felt Hat Ads From the 1920s

No item of men’s apparel can give more pleasure, or cause more grief, than his hat. It should have quality, it should have style, it should be appropriate to the occasion, and it should be becoming. A well selected Knapp-Felt fills the bill in every particular.

So how does a company go from one man working out of a cow shed to the second largest hat company in America? (They did eventually become the largest, but that wasn’t until after 1970 and the closure of the Stetson factory in Philadelphia.)

The short, and perhaps overly obvious, answer is through a lot of hard work and dedication. Success becomes much more likely to happen when you throw innovation into the mix, and this is the case with Crofut & Knapp. Add in the talent of promoting your employees into positions where they can do the most for the company, and you have a recipe for success. Two key components went hand in hand with their success. First, they offered a high-quality product at premium prices. While the premium price created a hurdle to overcome with consumers, the second component dealt very well with that hurdle: marketing and advertising. In this, Crofut & Knapp were innovators, setting a standard of excellence that left the other hat companies playing catch-up.

The hatting industry underwent a monumental change in the first half of the nineteenth century due to the transportation revolution and the industrial revolution, just as most American industries did. The hat factory evolved from a small, locally-owned shop into a much larger facility employing ever greater numbers of people.

Prior to the industrial revolution, hat manufacturers worked out of small shops and sold their hats locally. The shop was run by a single craftsman, or master, who might employ up to perhaps as many as four apprentices. Each craftsman performed all of the required steps to make a hat from a handful of fur to a finished, wearable product. Each small shop served a town, or perhaps a county, but their market did not reach much beyond that.

With the advent of the industrial and transportation revolutions, machinery aided in the manufacturing process and the concept of division of labor meant that workers began specializing in different parts of the production process. Some factories only performed one part of the process, such as the forming of felt bodies, and left the finishing to other companies. Distribution of the hats was left up to jobbers in the cities. Some companies did keep everything in house. In any case, hat production was increased, hat prices became more affordable, and more people could afford to buy better quality hats.

Into this new era of mechanization came James H. Knapp, who started out exactly as hatters had for centuries, as a one-man operation. With the partnership of Andrew J. Crofut, they launched the Derby as their chief product, and began the long road to success. Much of the first fifty years of Crofut & Knapp is shrouded in the mists of time. Advertising was typically done in local papers by the retailers, usually consisting of text and very few, if any, images of the product. The text would extol the virtues of the product, addressing the needs of the individual being targeted in the ad.

It was not until well into the twentieth century that companies would change the nature of advertising, focusing not on customers’ needs, as had previously been the case, but on their wants and desires instead. Advertising would move away from the traditional textual analysis of the properties of the product into a much more ambiguous and visual form, designed to entice consumers to purchase the product merely because they desired it. Croft & Knapp led the way among hat manufacturers in this advertising makeover and perhaps among most industries as a whole.

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Beautiful Vintage Photos and Posters of French Entertainer Mistinguett

Mistinguett (born Jeanne Florentine Bourgeois) was a French actress and singer. Bourgeois aspired to be an entertainer at a very young age. She began as a flower seller in a restaurant in her hometown, singing popular ballads while selling blossoms. After taking classes in theatre and singing, she began her career as an entertainer in 1885. One day on the train to Paris for a violin lesson, she met Saint-Marcel, who directed the revue at the Casino de Paris. He engaged her first as a stage-hand, and here she began to pursue her goal to become an entertainer.

Bourgeois made her debut as Mistinguett at the Casino de Paris in 1895 and went on to appear in venues such as the Folies Bergère, Moulin Rouge and Eldorado. Her risqué routines captivated Paris, and she went on to become the most popular French entertainer of her time and the highest-paid female entertainer in the world, even having her legs insured for 500,000 francs in 1919. During a tour of the United States, Mistinguett was asked by Time magazine to explain her popularity. “It is a kind of magnetism.” She replied. “I say 'Come closer' and draw them to me.”

Mistinguett died at the age of 8    2 in Bougival, France. Upon her death, writer Jean Cocteau observed in an obituary: “Her voice, slightly off-key, was that of the Parisian street hawkers—the husky, trailing voice of the Paris people. She was of the animal race that owes nothing to intellectualism. She incarnated herself. She flattered a French patriotism that was not shameful. It is normal now that she should crumble, like the other caryatids of that great and marvelous epoch that was ours.”

Take a look at the great French entertainer through these 21 captivating vintage photographs and posters:

Mistinguett and Max Dearly by Adrien Barrere, ca. 1909

Mistinguett by G.K. Benda, 1913

Mistinguett, 1920

Mistinguett by Leonetto Cappiello, 1920

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Vintage Cigarette and Cigar Advertising Posters in the 1920s and ’30s

Spurred by the instant coast to coast success of blended cigarette brands such as Camel, Lucky Strike and Chesterfield, cigarette companies spend millions on advertising and promotion to encourage smoking in 1920.

Cigarette and cigar advertisements in the 1920s and ’30s

In the 1920s, smoking was rare among women. However, passage of the 19th Amendment ushered in new freedoms and smoking in public became symbolic of women’s new role in society. American Tobacco taps into the women’s cigarette market with the marketing slogan “Reach for a Lucky instead of sweet.”

In the 1930s, almost every magazine and medical journal featured cigarette advertisement featuring opera singers, athletes, doctors, senators and movie stars. Every major radio show featured tobacco advertisements. Jack Benny would seamlessly weave the advertisement into his comedy hour.

Here below is a set of vintage posters of cigarette and cigar advertisements in the 1920s and 1930s.

Avis... Fumez les cigarettes de la Régie Française, circa 1920s

Be Nonchalant . . . Light a Murad Cigarette, circa 1920s

Cigarettes Leo, circa 1920s

Cigarillos 43, La Gran Marca Argentina, October 1920

Cigarillos 43, Plus Ultra, February 1920

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