The other day at Ormesby Hall there were loads of vintage travel posters pinned up on the walls in the old servants’ quarters at the top of the building.
I always love these. They’re relics of an age where travel was a luxury, and when even the process of getting to your destination was something to be enjoyed rather than endured, yet I think my favourite posters tend to be the domestic ones. It’s very easy to sell the exoticism of Cannes or Cairo, but there’s something lovely in the way the advertisers of old tried to persuade the average British holidaymaker that they too were part of this glamorous age of travel, even if they were just going to Maldon or Saltburn-by-the-Sea.
Anyway, in the interests of tempting people to come and visit me up in my new abode, I have hastily created a poster for my own little village.
[Begin boring bit] Having Googled them and skimmed through quite a few, the standard method for these things seems to be reducing an image to a small number of planes of colour, and including some strong shadows somewhere. So I took a picture of the view from Lythe Bank and sketched it up into a quick digital painting using the Wacom graphics tablet that I use for a lot of my drawing these days.
I left out as much detail and texture as I could bring myself to, but I did use a round blunt medium stiff brush tool to get a soft edge to the foliage. The sky looked odd without any variation in colour or clouds, so I worked that up just a bit too. Then I scribbled in an angular fellow with a flat cap, decided I didn’t much care for him, and deleted him (this is why doodling on a computer is so nice).
I tried a few fonts, before going back to look at the real posters again and seeing that they actually tend to use something akin to Johnston (the London Underground font). The closest free one I could find to this was Keep Calm from K-Type, so I used that.
Finally, the originals usually had the logo of whatever train, air or ferry line served them. Unfortunately, the principal way to get to my village is by car, but since all the white space at the bottom looked a bit empty, I quickly drew up a silhouette of an old car and used a free font called Canter to bodge together a logo [end boring bit].
Anyone tempted to make the trip?
That’s brilliant! I’m up for a road trip up north if the sky really is that blue up there?!
Liz
Ha! It’s sometimes that blue. Today it is distinctly grey, and sometimes there are sea frets and you can’t really see any sky at all, but that can be nice too in its way…
indyjols
Hi – I love your visit Lythe poster is it for sale? We have a holiday cottage in the village and would love to display it. Thanks
William Bancroft