Dynamic Graphics?

I would recommend looking at old Letraset catalogues, unfortunately their website does not really show many details and those it does show are pretty uninspiring.
Some of the House ones are in the date range.
http://www.letraset.com/uk/info/products/Phototone-Clipart.asp
http://houseind.com/house.php?kit=CHALET-FO&sub=silos
http://houseind.com/house.php?kit=POPART-FO&sub=illustrations

I had forgotten about the Dynamic Graphics stuff. They did the "Clipper" series of stuff right? I suppose I always associated their stuff with the 80s, since we had stacks of their catalogs at the print shop I worked at in the early 90s, and they were filled with Nagel rip off illos for nail salons and "half off designer fashions" ads, along with checkerboard patterns, paint splats, and other assorted 80s-ness.

Isn't the Letraset stuff mostly patterns and what not? I have thier 1994 catalog, and it's still stuffed with transfer type and Pantone paper. Ah, the olden days.

The House stuff is great, but I'm looking more for the whole ironic type of illustration. Good because it's bad.

Thanks for the suggestions!

Older Letraset catalogues of 80s had plenty of very 70s/60s images.
Good because they were so bad

You guys are so "era-ist".
Show some respect and represent your own time, not through mocking someone else's.
Coz in a few years from now some smart alec hipster will be dissing up your pathetic attempts at "irony".

So, Nick, are you saying I should learn to appreciate all of that bad Nagel-esque art? I guess when I start designing retro 80s album covers or rock posters, I'll be wishing I had a collection of that stuff to. ;)

On the serious side, I don't see appropriating bad 60s/70s art as any different from using old Victorian art in an ironic way. We as designers have a massive amount of visuals available to us, and we know very well the power of recontexualizing imagery. Plus, without that concept, we wouldn't have great artists like Ed Fotheringham or great designers like Art Chantry.

Tim -- thanks for the heads up on the older Letraset catalogs, I'll see what I can dig up.

Patrick Nagel is not bad. It is definitely evocative of the 80s, but it is not bad. Well, not "bad" in a tasteless sort of way.

Pretty hard to defend the rip off stuff like this though:



FLASHBACK!

Ohh. Yikes. Yeah, the biggest sign that it is a rip-off is that she has far too much clothing on to be an original Nagel. :^}

Maybe because it's a he?
(The irony of '80s androgynism.)

>appropriating bad 60s/70s art

Sean, I have a number of objections to your method of "recontextualizing" as a modus operandi.

In the first place, it's intellectually lazy. I could be more forgiving if I thought that, like Max Ernst (Une Semaine de Bonte), you would be using collage to create startling surrealist juxtapositions. But the trends today are "retro is cool", and "scrap-booking is us" which aren't the same. Please explain why "bad is good" is not just banal. Surely, when we've had the ghetto DIY retro T-shirt featured in a Macdonald's campaign, this trend is over. Or as they say now, "so gay".

In the second place, it's plain old lazy, using pre-fabricated materiel for one's art, especially clip art.

Thirdly, why not express your own era in an original way, using the media of today creatively, rather than just shuffle around cliches? Yes, I know the problem that it so easily comes out looking slick and corporate, but shouldn't we make some attempt to move beyond self-loathing?

Fourth, why not support your peers -- illustrators.

Fifth, (to add to Tiffany's distinction between good art and bad art in cliches) specific to your production method: by using retro clip art to poke fun at an era, you are taking a cheap shot. Of course, because it would have cost a lot more, or been illegal, to use original art from the era, or commission/originate something in that style.

Besides, who are you trying to fool? -- Fess up, you're a kitsch-fiend, you actually like that bad old stuff at face value but are too embarrassed to admit it, and so hide behind an "ironic" posture :-)

Nick,
First, your respect might be misplaced, the Letraset images I was describing were not good, they were a generic pastiche of other, better illustrations.
Second, maybe your prejudice is doing Sean a disservice. Respect may have to be earned, but it shouldn't be jettisoned until you have something to base that respect (or otherwise) on.
On the other hand, I do like kitsch.

Tim, it wasn't the retro stock images I was respecting, but the style of the era they came from.
In general, stock is detrimental to artists/photographers, because it lowers the price that can be charged for original commissioned work, and because it puts so much of the fee into the pockets of middlemen.

However, there is some stock, such as the recent Getty theatre shoot, that would be prohibitively expensive to commission.

I'm also somewhat hypocritical, having released a set of retro RF stock photos on fStop, but those shots are original now, in a sense, in that they've never been released before.

I am prejudiced against retro, based on how people typically repurpose old images.
However, once in a while I come across something old-new that's different, like The Triplets of Belleville. So, go Sean, mash it up good.

Vince, why lump Rio in with the other two? Do you think Patrick was appropriating Elvis' face for his beautiful women? (or men to include Nick's theory)

While not clip art but certainly useful as a reference, try looking up "Trademarks of the '60s & '70s" by Tyler Blik

Nick, you have some good points, but as you mentioned, folks like Max Ernst have used existing art to create new art.

The work that I'm doing lately is rock posters (which I do for free tickets and free beer, so that's why I don't hire an artist -- there ain't no money to do so). The audience I'm designing for enjoys kitsch imagery, it will bring people to the shows. The bands like the posters for same reasons.

Why is "bad is good" not just banal? Borrowing from the definition of irony from the dictionary: The use of images to express something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning, and employing such contrasts for humorous or rhetorical effect. I like irony. I guess that the design style that appeals to me most has a touch of humor to it. Something to engage the viewer, give them a little personal interaction with the piece.

Slick corporate work (gosh though, a lot of that uses stock photos doesn't it?) is the pablum of the design world. Any half-assed designer can knock out brochures that have an image of some business transaction and some type set in Garamond. We've all had to do work like that. It's boring. Not to say that it can't be done amazingly well, but most of it is bad.

In my day job, I commision over $100,000 a year in new art. I love commissioning art. It's fun, I get to pay artists well for work that they enjoy doing. It's given me a huge amount of professional pride in doing right by artists. But that's my day job.

I'm a big fan of Art Chantry (I've taken classes from him, and enjoyed talking to him as well), and Jeff Kleinsmith. The craft that goes into that work is keen. I dig it. Repurposing art is a cool way of speaking to the audience. I don't design that way for a financial brochure, but I sure as hell will for a rock poster.

There's some other folks I'm not real keen on. Charles S. Anderson is one of them. The whole CSA archive seemed like a really cool idea to me, until they started to sell the images. I have books of clip with images from the 50s that are on CSA's web site, does that mean I can't use that stuff? Ridiculous. They copped images from the same sources that I did. There's line art of masks from the back of Famous Monsters of Filmland, there's stuff from old ad cuts and printer's clip books, however, to their credit, there's new stuff that is done in that style as well. I wish that CSA had kept those images to themselves instead of selling them. Something just seems wrong with re-copyrighting expired material. I used to love Anderson's design work (and I still like the old stuff), but it's become such a vehicle to sell their art now, I feel as though it's just as bad as that boring corporate work.

Am I a kitsch fiend? Sure. I love kitsch. I like that it's ironic, that it looks old, from another era, and I love that it is bad. It's like bad television. When I watch Fantasy Island or Knight Rider, I know it's bad. The direction, acting, set design, and plotting are all sub par. Yet, for some reason, you can enjoy it, if you put away your opinion of it's inate crappiness. You enjoy the crap. It's the same reason I like vernacular photography, and found imagery. It's just crappy stuff that you can make into art ala Warhol.

And just so you guys can get an idea of what I'm designing, here's a sample:

Just last week I bought this book
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/081184529X/qid=1106733847/sr=2-1/ref=pd_ka_b_2_1/002-4670156-7957606
a great reference for rock posters.