Vintage smoking ads from lamarde

qua-Velvet recently tweeted about lamarde, thus introducing me to the fabulous world of vintage cigarette advertising and packaging. There’s a reason we have so many unfortunate people addicted to nicotine: the advertising was glamourous, beautiful, and downright awesome in terms of design execution. Despite my devotion to all things design-related (which, yes, includes my appreciation for pro-smoking ads), I still feel compelled to state that I abhor cigarettes and their disastrously horrific effects on the body (and on innocent bystanders’ bodies). I have a step-father who is currently battling stage IV lung cancer. Meanwhile, my mother won’t stop lighting up, despite the smoking-induced tragedy barely breathing next to her. I am, in other words, not a fan of smoking.

But I am a fan of great design. And of lamarde’s beautiful gallery of advertisements, which is where I found all of the images posted below. Enjoy. These are some of my favorites:

Visit lamarde’s blog HERE. Follow lamarde on Twitter HERE.

Vintage designs for Olivetti

I am definitely digging these vibrant vintage designs that I found over at Ninonbooks, which were created for Olivetti typewriter and calculator ads in the 1950s and ’60s.

Aren’t they great? I kind of want to own every single one of those machines, please. More HERE.

Swedish detective novels

All the images below are borrowed from the lovely Deckarsidorna and date from 1908 (first image) to 1965 (last image):

1919

1930

1930

1931

1934

1949

1950

1958

1965

Thanks to Martin Klasch for clueing me in to this great collection!

Design on my desk.

It’s pretty unnecessary to state that I was supremely excited to receive the following Pelican 1969 edition of R.D. Laing’s Divided Self last week. In fact, I posted an image of a very similar edition last month and drooled over the cover design.

If all book covers were as cool as this, I probably wouldn’t mind that they’re strewn all over/next to/around my desk. And couch. And bed. And life.

And here are the covers of a couple of my old stand-bys: two texts by Alfred de Vigny from the 19th century. Stello (1832) and the play Chatterton (1835), which I’m currently translating into English.

These Garnier-Flammarion paperbacks from 1984 (Stello) and 1968 (Chatterton) are the first copies I ever purchased of each text. I now own three versions of Stello and four of Chatterton. You could say I love them.

Here’s another Stello paperback (Garnier 1970), frolicking next to Laing:

Yellows and blues and greens throughout the whole lot. Conspiracy?

Artistic Printing Album from Sheaff : Ephemera

Whoa. Wait until you see these vintage printing ads/cards/etc. that I just found in the Artistic Printing Album of Sheaff : Ephemera. The colors make me extremely happy.

My new Anthropologie pillow

As promised, some pictures of the embroidered Anthropologie pillow that I purchased last night on massive clearance. The plaid backside ain’t no accident.

Anthropologie generally has a multi-faceted effect on me. Initially, I feel instantly comforted by the aesthetic beauty of all that surrounds me. But then, inevitably, I actually start to become a little tweaked out by just how much every single item – down to an individual plaid doorknob – totally seems like it was MADE FOR ME. And only me. Though, intellectually, I realize that there a bajillion other people who feel exactly the same way. Which weirds me out even more, because I consider myself a stand-alone kind of girl. So then the Twilight Zone music starts to play and I find my temperature rising and my pace quickening and I just need to purchase something and get the eff outta there.

And so I did.

With this awesome pillow.

Koko – Match Co. pillows

scored an awesome embroidered pillow on serious clearance at Anthropologie earlier this evening. Highly proud of myself, I came home ready to find a picture to share with you of my brilliant find. But then I found these. And now I kind of can’t stop thinking about them. But I still love my Anthropologie pillow. I will take a picture of it tomorrow.

Until then, please enjoy these ridiculously cool (and, thus, quite pricey) rice bag and matchbox pillows from Koko – Match Co., which instantly made me think of Agence Eureka’s Flickr set:

Shuffle

Check out these wonderfully designed vintage playing cards, which I just discovered over at Delicious Industries’ Flickr page:

Visit Delicious Industries’ blog HERE and follow them on Twitter HERE.