This is a personal project, experimenting with web typography based on vintage type samples — old advertisements, packaging, hotel matchbooks, postcards, etc — and recreating them for the web.
In my opinion, typography and design have gotten boring as we adopt the “less is more” philosophy. I’ve always been a fan of “more is more” and there is something captivating about the way we used to arrange our type, sometimes bordering on incoherent and disorderly — but undeniably interesting and beautiful in its own right. This quote by Bethany Heck in an essay on New Traditionalism sums it up well:
"Vintage designs have reminded designers to take risks, to mix more typefaces and break more rules.”
Well, who isn’t interested in risk-taking and rule-breaking, especially in the usually non-life-threatening realm of design?
For the best coherency and to show how much you can do with so little (and to prevent the world’s longest page load) I chose a few modern typefaces that I felt could illustrate the whole range of samples well enough.
Webfonts Used: Oswald, Krona One, Cardo, Raleway, Herr Von Muellerhoff, and Sacramento.
Hover or click on the paperclip to view the original imagery, for sake of comparison and including the source.
Enjoy!