Styles for Starters______________________________________

Popular Culture

Overview

"Kissing the war goodbye..." is the name of this world famous photograph above and nothing will symbolise the feeling of the day as much as this: The foe had been vanquished and a victorious and unprecedentedly prosperous America settled back to the business of conducting its everyday existence. This prosperity, which for the first time in history encompassed the blue collar section of society - albeit only the white component thereof; The American Dream of total and complete financial security where every man woman and child had access to health and life insurance, a home and one if not two cars, could eat and drink in abundance and had plenty of money left over for consumer products as well as entertainment is in fact what determines the look of popular culture products and icons of the day. The working man, his tastes and expectations were taken into account when designing products from cars to commercials. The result is the lighthearted, colourful, whimsical style of the 1950's of sharks' fin detailed cars and neon signs that we associate with the 1950's retro era.

Needless to say a term that can be readily associated to all this is Kitsch, a term associated with art and design that carries overtly exaggerated, sentimental and/or vulgar content or visual elements. Kitsch is a derogatory term but where retro design is concerned it has to be acknowledged that the way in which it is implemented transcends the original exaggeration and vulgarity to create a unique and powerful style all its own. The signs on the Las Vegas strip cannot be defined within the boundaries of good taste: Every typographic as well as spatial rule that we can think of is ruthlessly broken, or better still totally ignored to begin with; resulting in what could easily have become visual mayhem but ends up being tremendously compelling, even powerful. Indeed the designers, or in some cases perhaps craftsmen and technicians would be a more appropriate choice of words here, that created the pop culture products of the 1950's and early '60's went about their task completely ignoring the perscribed standarts of good taste and design to end up with this vast oevre of naughty, almost anarchistic range from gadgets to automobiles, from advertisements to vacuum cleaners...

Advertising
Las Vegas
Objects
Furniture
Fashion
The Movies
Cultural Icons

Advertising

Magazine Ad's from 1950's America (top and bottom)