Design In Airline Travel Posters 1920 1970

This book studies design in airline travel posters of the 1920–1970: period. It is both a semiology and a sociocultural cultural history that explores the way advertising posters combine information and fantasy to create seductive images/texts. The book is lavishly illustrated in colour, the images constituting part of the overall argument. The field of poster studies is vast, but it is surprising how little work has been done till date on the fundamental structures – semiotic and semantic – that underpin the visual messages posters produce. Most studies of posters focus either on their history; on specific themes – politics, travel, sport, cinema; or on their status as collectable items. Though such approaches are valid, they hardly account for the specificity of the poster’s appeal or for the complex semiotic and cultural issues poster art raises. This book sets out to tackle these latter issues since they are fundamental both to the deeper significance and to the wider appeal of the poster as a cultural form. In doing so it focuses on the field of airline travel posters which developed precisely in the period of the twentieth century (1920–1970) that coincided with the onset of mass travel.

Originally published: London: Laurence King Pub., 2006.

From Futurism and Modernism to Art Deco and Surrealism, aviation was from its earliest days inextricably linked with revolutionary new ways of seeing the world. Focusing on the golden age of British civil aviation, British Aviation Posters shows how art and design was applied with great creativity and style to develop and promote aviation in the UK and beyond.

A nostalgic and celebratory look back at one hundred years of passenger flight, featuring full-color reproductions of route maps and posters from the world's most iconic airlines, from the author of bestselling cult classic Transit Maps of the World. In this gorgeously illustrated collection of airline route maps, Mark Ovenden and Maxwell Roberts look to the skies and transport readers to another time. Hundreds of images span a century of passenger flight, from the rudimentary trajectory of routes to the most intricately detailed birds-eye views of the land to be flown over. Advertisements for the first scheduled commercial passenger flights featured only a few destinations, with stunning views of the countryside and graphics of biplanes. As aviation took off, speed and mileage were trumpeted on bold posters featuring busy routes. Major airlines produced highly stylized illustrations of their global presence, establishing now-classic brands. With trendy and forward-looking designs, cartographers celebrated the coming together of different cultures and made the earth look ever smaller. Eventually, fleets got bigger and routes multiplied, and graphic designers have found creative new ways to display huge amounts of information. Airline hubs bring their own cultural mark and advertise their plentiful destination options. Innovative maps depict our busy world with webs of overlapping routes and networks of low-cost city-to-city hopping. But though flying has become more commonplace, Ovenden and Roberts remind us that early air travel was a glamorous affair for good reason. Airline Maps is a celebration of graphic design, cartographic skills and clever marketing, and a visual feast that reminds us to enjoy the journey as much as the destination.

Like the other Sasek classics, this is a facsimile edition of the original book. The brilliant, vibrant illustrations have been meticulously preserved, remaining true to his vision more than 40 years later. Facts have been updated for the 21st-century, appearing on a "This is . . . Today" page at the back of the book. These charming illustrations, coupled with Sasek's witty, playful narrative, make for a perfect souvenir that will delight both children and their parents, many of whom will remember the series from their own childhoods. This is Hong Kong, first published in 1965, captures the enchantment and the contrasts of Hong Kong in the sixties. Roaring jets bring in the tourists; bamboo rickshaws taxi them through exotic streets fragrant with incense, roasting chestnuts, and honey-glazed Peking duck. Sasek shows you the sweeping panorama of gleaming Kowloon Bay framed by misty mountain ridges, then moves in for close-ups of laborers and hawkers, refugees from the mainland, and sailors of flame-red junks, and the strange "water people" who, it is said, never set foot on dry land.

Traces the history of human flight and air travel through 180 years of poster art, in a celebration of the hot air balloons of the mid-nineteenth century to the sleek, high-tech airliners of the present day.