I love love love pretty much anything mid-century.
Let’s face it. I pretty much wish I was born in 1934 like my grandparents so I could have lived through mid-century America.
I have been waiting my whole life (not an exaggeration) for mid-century style to come back.
I got a new soundtrack on CD the other day — Promises, Promises
love love
Add that to … I have been thinking about the direction I want the design of Lemon and Raspberry to go.
The site officially launched in May, with a free WordPress template that I customized to the best of my limited ability, with photos I took of lemons and raspberries for the visuals.
I’ve also got an ebook half written, with the layout roughly started by my marketing partner, and I’m aiming for a mid-September release.
So, yeah, I should start thinking about what I want to do design-wise for real.
Vintage-inspired, mid-century awesomeness.
So I thought that a mid-century, vintage inspired branding of Lemon and Raspberry would be so fun! Something that *feels* contemporary (not old/vintage) but still inspired by mid-century style.
In order to get some ideas of what I like, I thought the best place to look for mid-century contemporary design was probably Vintage Ad Browser.
Good-bye hours and hours of my life.
I literally only got about 1/3 through 1 decade of 1 category.
This is going to take awhile ….
Here are some fun ones (all from the 1950s):
I started with the travel ads (love) and got more ideas for more projects ….
How much fun would it be to use vintage ads for a location in your scrapbook/travel journal for a trip?!
Like this one when you go to Oregon, or this one when you go to Switzerland, or the Arizona Biltmore or this other one for your trip to the Bahamas (Kaitlin)?
Fun ephemera to stick in whenever you need a transition, or as background to journaling or a title page …
But wait! there’s more!
TWA had this fantastic series of ads …. all with the exact same layout but with different stories …
And, my personal favorite …. Southern California:
I even found one for Rome …. And I’m sure I can find one for London and maybe even Alaska (next year’s vacation)
Super excited to set aside a Saturday to just immerse myself …. There are so so so so sso oooo many vintage ads uploaded to this site! I can’t wait!
Take a look!
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Today I have a guest post up at My Sundry Musings – a blog friend of mine (Catherine) who is taking herself on an Hawaiian vacation and asked me to fill in a post for her!
So fun … (so jealous) 
I’ve blogged 5 tips for better summer vacation photos! Take a look, leave a comment and let me know if you have questions!
As much as the design from that era may evoke warm, fuzzy nostalgia for days gone by . . . I can’t help but disagree with you on wanting to have lived through that era. Life pretty much sucked for anyone who wasn’t rich, white, and male. I’ve heard too many terrible stories from my family–my grandmother was sent back to Mexico during the Depression for being “an illegal,” despite the fact that she was born in Los Angeles and had a birth certificate to prove it; my dad was beaten by cops for helping high schoolers organize the “blow outs” in Los Angeles–to truly wish I was growing up in those times.
When I look back at those times, I’m just thankful that our ancestors had to go through the roughest times to make way for progress and freedom for us. I have a feeling our own children will feel the same way about us 40 years from now. I hope they’ll be saying something like, “Can you believe that when our parents were young, gay people weren’t allowed to get married? How crazy!”