Travel in the 90s was a glamorous affair. People would suit-up for flights, everyone would wear their Sunday best to the airport. Ships and planes were the epitome of luxury, every year something new would be launched promising to be more spacious, faster and more luxurious than any other before them. It was a mark of social status if you could afford travel.
Railways opened up America and Europe, luxe ocean liners introduced elegance into overseas voyages, and drivers took to the road in record numbers in their new automobiles. By the mid-1940s, new airlines crisscrossed the globe, winging adventure-seekers to far-flung destinations.
Travel agents and ticket offices during this period were festooned with vivid, eye-catching posters, all designed to capture the beauty, excitement and adventure of travel and to promote a world of enticing destinations and new modes of transportation. Individual artists gained fame for their distinctive graphic styles and iconic imagery, and many posters from this era still remain important works of art long after their original advertising purposes have faded.
- From the Boston Public Library’s Print Department
Travel posters, the height of print advertising, were iconic. Each as beautiful as the journeys they were advertising. And remember all these are created before the internet, Photoshop and Illustrator happened. We bring to you the best of the vintage travel posters from the past:
Cruising was every bit like the French, a classy affair.
You were poster-perfect then, and still postcard-perfect now.
This is all I need to convince me to head to Austria to ski.
Still better than the Instagram photos of the Taj Mahal.
Hong Kong looks like a quaint European town in this poster.
THIS POSTER IS STILL RELEVANT NOW.
France, will you stop taking my breath away.
When the Great Barrier Reef was still thriving, perhaps this poster worked too well…
Before skyscrapers took over.
What an epic journey it must’ve been.
3 days?! People have so much patience in the past.
All prints courtesy of Boston Public Library
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