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| Vintage Poster & Prints Lookbook | May 2013 ©NZ Fine Prints Ltd |
Showing posts with label tourism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tourism. Show all posts
Vintage Posters & Prints (NZ Fine Prints Look Book 5/13)
The Art of early NZ Tourism "Selling the Dream" - Book Review
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| Selling The Dream: The Art of Early New Zealand Tourism |
Our verdict: This sprawling book is the essential sourcebook on early NZ tourism publicity.
The book is in two parts, a selection of illustrated essays followed by collections of NZ tourism and travel publicity material sorted by topic, such as "Sportsman's Paradise" and "Celebrations and Exhibitions", each with a short introduction.
Margaret McClure's essay on the development of early NZ tourism sets the scene, demonstrating how changes in tourism publicity material reflected changes in strategy and the balance between targeting domestic and international tourists. Richard Wolfe places tourism publicity in its cultural context, using the material as a lens to understand the changing way that we view ourselves - and what we want to project to potential visitors as the essence of "New Zealandness". Past president of the International Vintage Poster Dealers Association David Pollack offers a sense of what NZ designers were up against in their fight to attract tourists to NZ - both in terms of competing with global destinations and attractions but also placing NZ tourism posters in context alongside work from famous contemporaneous designers of the Art Nouveau, Bell Epoque and Art Deco periods.
Mark Derby from the Ministry of Culture and Heritage does a thorough job of examining the "poi girl, haka warrior" theme of much early publicity and justifiably laments what was "a remarkably limited vocabulary of Maori imagery". Lee Davidson contributes a fluent and well structured essay on mountain tourism showing how the image of the rugged mountaineer was appropriated to attract tourists to resorts that were anything but "roughing it".
Art historian Gail Ross's first essay is a standout, she brings the world of the early NZ graphic artists to life in her lively description of training the "apprentice dream makers", her second essay on New Zealand Tourism Poster Stamps combines a well written potted history of NZ "Cinderellas" with a sharp appreciation of art and design. In his essay Warren Feeney makes fascinating new connections between fine art and commercial art in NZ and in passing highlights several enticing topics that seem to be crying out for further research. Photography's enduring role in tourism publicity is discussed by Barry Hancox, with some hard work behind the scenes matching original photographs with the resultant poster. It was a revelation to realise that photographs from the Tourism department catalogue were "an essential and widely used reference for the graphic artists producing posters and other publicity materials".
The last essay is the second from an "outsider", in this case Nicholas Lowry from the vintage poster department of an American auctioneer who pinpoints what makes NZ poster design distinctive from other countries posters designed at the same time. Lowry touches on some of waves of fashion for vintage posters that I wrote about when I tried to put the use of NZ vintage posters as decoration into some kind of historical context a few years ago. Lowry offers a welcome note of criticism not seen often enough in "Selling the Dream", however his critique of Leonard Mitchell's work because he dared to use colours that were not from "nature's paint box" seems unduly harsh.
The illustrations by topic are encyclopedic. "Selling the Dream" is the perfect sourcebook for designers to find visual inspiration and should be in every NZ graphic arts professional's library. It is also an entertaining coffee table book that has been a pleasure to dip into repeatedly over the past few weeks to discover something new.
I did wish there were captions next to the images and the lack of an index means the reader is not easily able to find more images by a designer whose work appears under different topics. But these minor grumbles are both forgivable and completely understandable given the enormity of the project that was written and researched outside office hours.
"Selling the Dream" is an inspiring example of private scholarship and research into the NZ arts that will give you many years of enjoyment - copies of the book are available throughout NZ at bookstores. NB: I have just been told that if you purchase directly from sellingthedream.co.nz you will receive a 10% discount of the cover price plus free NZ delivery.
P.S. The trio behind the book have run a marketing master class with the campaign for their entirely self-funded book. This writer might happen to be the perfect target demographic for a publication like this but as someone who has worked at the commercial end of arts marketing for nearly 20 years I am in awe of the sheer number of tweets, reviews, launch invitations and carefully targeted advertisments that I have come across for "Selling the Dream". Quite simply you guys have run an exemplary publicity campaign that deserves to be a case study for modern marketing in NZ - as well as selling the entire print run of the book of course!
New series of vintage NZ posters released
More vintage posters from famous NZ graphic designers have been released for sale today by New Zealand Fine Prints.
Artistic flair, clever typography, arresting images and print-making skill was all demonstrated by graphic artists such as Marcus King and Leonard Mitchell, early 20th century graphic designers (or commercial artists as they would have been called at the time) designing posters for clients such as the NZ Tourist and Publicity Department. (I have previously written a brief history of how vintage posters in New Zealand fit in to the global story of poster art design and modern day collecting.)
The work of these designers is now recognised as classic imagery of the period by contemporary graphic artists. However with original vintage posters now scarce, expensive and sometimes in poor condition New Zealand Fine Prints has been working hard to compile a collection of re-issued vintage posters from New Zealand. We started with vintage ski-ing posters such as "Winter Sports at Tongariro National Park" and "Coronet Peak, Queenstown, New Zealand", then vintage travel and tourism posters for specific travel destinations such as "Mitre Peak, Milford Sound" or New Zealand generally, for example "NZ - for your next holiday". We are pleased to announce today you can now buy posters that advertise new destinations like Timaru along with a non ski-ing Mount Cook advertisement, the delightful "Mt Cook: For Summer Joys", that accompanies this article. Also check out new vintage botanical posters published by the Reuben Price Gallery such as the New Zealand Tree Fern (almost certainly the work of Marcus King) and the stunning Mountain Daisy
by a (so far) unknown designer - let us know if you think you know whose work it is please in the comments below.
NZ Fine Prints' latest vintage series also focuses on transport and vintage advertisements for NZ companies, we loved the aviation poster "Go by Tasman Road" (advertising TEAL - Tasman Empire Airways Limited) re-published in 2011 by Capper Press and now have new shipping posters in stock today such as "The New Zealand Shipping Co Ltd - to SOUTHAMPTON and LONDON via PANAMA" which features a picture of the "Rangitata" (but also mentions the other ships on the line, the Rangitiki and Rangitane). Since the 1970s we have stocked prints of early New Zealand immigrant ships (for instance the majestic Lancashire Witch ship's portrait by marine artist Thomas Dutton) that are popular with genealogists researching their family history and we are sure that people whose families first came out on the NZ Shipping Company's "Royal Mail Line" "modern motor vessels" will enjoy owning a vintage poster featuring the boat their ancestors who emigrated to NZ came out on.
This vintage series also begins the project of re-printing classic advertisements from 20th century NZ that we think are the best examples of well known brands combined with superb graphic design. We think "New Zealand Apples: The Empire's Star Turn" (design based on a painting by Edward Cole) which features a young woman (possibly Zealandia from the Coat of Arms) wrapped in the New Zealand flag is the perfect retro decoration for the kitchen or dining room. Greggs "Club Coffee" poster from Dunedin that is "Packed in Fancy Canisters" is a genuine piece of NZ retro design should be popular with cafe owners too.
We'll see how sales of this latest series of vintage posters goes, hopefully there will continue to be a growing demand for a wider range of vintage New Zealand posters. Then we can begin work on the next vintage series as we have some exciting vintage themes and subjects that are as yet unexplored! Please let us know about your favourite vintage posters too so we can make sure that there aren't any examples of classic NZ design that we have missed in our series of poster re-prints over the past few years.
Artistic flair, clever typography, arresting images and print-making skill was all demonstrated by graphic artists such as Marcus King and Leonard Mitchell, early 20th century graphic designers (or commercial artists as they would have been called at the time) designing posters for clients such as the NZ Tourist and Publicity Department. (I have previously written a brief history of how vintage posters in New Zealand fit in to the global story of poster art design and modern day collecting.)
The work of these designers is now recognised as classic imagery of the period by contemporary graphic artists. However with original vintage posters now scarce, expensive and sometimes in poor condition New Zealand Fine Prints has been working hard to compile a collection of re-issued vintage posters from New Zealand. We started with vintage ski-ing posters such as "Winter Sports at Tongariro National Park" and "Coronet Peak, Queenstown, New Zealand", then vintage travel and tourism posters for specific travel destinations such as "Mitre Peak, Milford Sound" or New Zealand generally, for example "NZ - for your next holiday". We are pleased to announce today you can now buy posters that advertise new destinations like Timaru along with a non ski-ing Mount Cook advertisement, the delightful "Mt Cook: For Summer Joys", that accompanies this article. Also check out new vintage botanical posters published by the Reuben Price Gallery such as the New Zealand Tree Fern (almost certainly the work of Marcus King) and the stunning Mountain Daisy
by a (so far) unknown designer - let us know if you think you know whose work it is please in the comments below.NZ Fine Prints' latest vintage series also focuses on transport and vintage advertisements for NZ companies, we loved the aviation poster "Go by Tasman Road" (advertising TEAL - Tasman Empire Airways Limited) re-published in 2011 by Capper Press and now have new shipping posters in stock today such as "The New Zealand Shipping Co Ltd - to SOUTHAMPTON and LONDON via PANAMA" which features a picture of the "Rangitata" (but also mentions the other ships on the line, the Rangitiki and Rangitane). Since the 1970s we have stocked prints of early New Zealand immigrant ships (for instance the majestic Lancashire Witch ship's portrait by marine artist Thomas Dutton) that are popular with genealogists researching their family history and we are sure that people whose families first came out on the NZ Shipping Company's "Royal Mail Line" "modern motor vessels" will enjoy owning a vintage poster featuring the boat their ancestors who emigrated to NZ came out on.
This vintage series also begins the project of re-printing classic advertisements from 20th century NZ that we think are the best examples of well known brands combined with superb graphic design. We think "New Zealand Apples: The Empire's Star Turn" (design based on a painting by Edward Cole) which features a young woman (possibly Zealandia from the Coat of Arms) wrapped in the New Zealand flag is the perfect retro decoration for the kitchen or dining room. Greggs "Club Coffee" poster from Dunedin that is "Packed in Fancy Canisters" is a genuine piece of NZ retro design should be popular with cafe owners too.We'll see how sales of this latest series of vintage posters goes, hopefully there will continue to be a growing demand for a wider range of vintage New Zealand posters. Then we can begin work on the next vintage series as we have some exciting vintage themes and subjects that are as yet unexplored! Please let us know about your favourite vintage posters too so we can make sure that there aren't any examples of classic NZ design that we have missed in our series of poster re-prints over the past few years.
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