Social Distancing paves way for Reimagined Vintage Travel Posters

Like most of us that are working from home or self-isolating, Jennifer Baer, a creative designer at NASA didn’t know what to do with all the free time. She spent three weeks in her two-bedroom apartment in California locked away. Just when the heaviness and helplessness started hitting her, she decided to do something better out of it.

Baer made note of all the vintage travel posters that she had come across, and decided to do what she did best – be creative!

Vintage Travel Posters for Social Distancing

She made a series of her own posters that gave a quirky spin-off to these classics. These posters were made to promote the concept of social distancing with constructive messages that would make you smile for sure, maybe even laugh out loud.

All the cabin feverish Americans were asked to “Stay the F* Home” through her travel poster that quickly garnered everyone’s attention. She posted these designs on her Twitter handle and they were received very well by the public with more than 68,000 likes and 20,000 retweets.

These posters have been gaining a lot of traction lately, especially with everyone staying at home. Though the posters have captions that might be quite unique, they have some calming colours and undertones that will just make your social media feed and your day better. Each poster has something that you can relate to like “Surf Your Couch” or “Take a Trip to Your Own Bathroom!” that will certainly make you giggle.

When asked about her tagline, Baer told Adweek, “I can say ‘Stay the F Home’ and not worry about being offensive because I’ve given you something beautiful to look at.”

Baer was extremely meticulous with the designs, making sure to give her attention to all the little details of her work. For example, there is a fictional credit line at the bottom of the poster that says “Issued by the Coronavirus Tourism Bureau.”

Work Progress Administration, a New Deal Agency, has funded to bring in the work of out-of-work artists that could help with this situation. This Great Depression could be used to inspire national pride and also create art that could capture the same. Baer was very inspired by this initiative and wanted to do something of her own.

This creativity is often referred to as a call-in-the-situation kind of advertising, where people take a situation and make advertising work. However, this particular project is more personal than professional. These travel posters from the 20s and 30s have not only brought back older designs but also given space to reimagine them.

Talking about the style of these posters, Baer said, “They’re so simple. Verb, noun, ‘travel here.’ They weren’t giving you more than you needed to know, and they glamorized it.”

That being said, the reinvention of older posters is not something that stemmed up suddenly. It has been a thing that has garnered people’s attention for quite a few months now. Earlier, the creative agency FF Los Angeles created some posters in December. They picked up the topic of Fridays for Future organisations by Greta Thunberg. These classic advertisements depicted a grim look into the future.

Baer’s posters, unlike these, are more of a satire on the self-isolation everyone is dealing with right now.

She has been working overtime to complete this project and literally took half a day to get done with it. The release happened, shortly after which she has received a wonderful response from across the world. She says she has been overwhelmed and grateful to be able to contribute.

Recalling a retweet from J.K. Rowling, Baer added, “That’s the thing that finally made me cry. What I have to offer feels less than what the front-line responders are doing, but messaging is also critical.”

She further added that she is glad to have the toolset that would make people laugh. She wishes to exercise this as an opportunity to unite everyone through humour and creativity.

What do you think about these posters? Do let us know your views in the comments section below.