Yesterday I fell into the rabbit hole of looking up vintage travel advertisements. I hit upon the idea of collecting these for our condo as a way to decorate and also to remember the places that Aissa and I have been over the last five years together. Some of these old ads really called out to me for their grace and simplicity, and since I had a bunch of sketches from our recent trip to Hong Kong I decided to make one to commemorate our trip.
I loved this advertisement for NYK steamship lines, which used an Oriental (in this case either Japanese or Chinese) fan to frame the steamship. I used a similar framing device but instead put my sketch of the Tian Tan Buddha in the fan as the centerpiece. I also added some copy that I think sounds like 1930s advertising talk. To make sure it sounded legit I spoke it out loud in my fake English accent. I like how this came together and I'm hoping to do a series of travel ads based on the places we've already visited.
