Midcentury North American Restaurant Placemats
a day ago
- #midcentury
- #design
- #ephemera
- Collection of midcentury North American restaurant placemats bought at Brimfield Flea.
- Placemats date from late 1940s to 1950s, reflecting postwar boom and highway expansion.
- Served as menus, maps, or activity sheets for car-bound tourists.
- Cheap offset printing influenced their visual style: solid colors, bold line art, limited palettes.
- Design decisions driven by economics, leading to mixed stock and custom illustrations.
- Precursor to modern nostalgia-driven design trends like 'Heartland Hodgepodge'.
- Featured archive: ZuantuSet, a collection of 179,692 historical Chinese diagrammatic graphics.
- Speaker at AIGA Conference in LA with discount code GOODSPEED15 for readers.
- Plans to scan and share old magazines from Iran.
- Suggestions for future ephemera coverage: napkins, menus, bubble gum packaging, matchbooks.