3 Valuable Tips on How to Promote Art Using the Retro Style
A lot of businesses use simple printed materials in boosting their marketing efforts. And it’s fine, perfectly fine. But if you want to take your marketing efforts to the next level, you should start considering a new approach. What we have in mind is creating your very own designs. But instead of simple, modern designs, you’ll have to use retro ones for your business sign marketing campaign. Hire the services of a professional sign company for your banner signs, outdoor custom metal signs, large format posters, displays, vehicle wraps, and more to make sure the whole city is covered with your promotional materials and that everyone knows your name and art.
If you think this is impossible but is interested in making it work, we have a bunch of tips on how you can use elegant retro designs to start off your personal artsy sign project.
Tip #1: Look for a Retro Concept and Be Creative
This tip is not so easy to pull off but is entirely possible. You can do this right by putting the lessons learned of all popular typographers in the past in mind. Take a look at some of Nils Leonard’s radical designs. He is Grey London’s admired art director. If you notice something about his art, they are all text. We know what you have in mind. You probably think that signs that aim to advertise your art would feature the artwork itself, but whether you believe it or not, it actually does wonders. For all you know, it’s even better than just showing them your artworks.
The ultimate question is how? The ultimate secret for this trick lies in the utilization of white spaces to allow the viewers to focus on the text. While a group of words would be unattractive and not easy to read, Leonard was able to make the words interesting by skewing them to a side and bolding some of the phrases subtly, something that others cannot pull off. He is able to make them read every paragraph as each one tells a story. By not revealing the artwork itself, the viewers will then be excited to see it for themselves.
Still can’t believe how this is possible? Here’s another one. The Belgian National Theatre base design is spectacular. The only catch is that the design is made up of pure words, no pictorial elements at all! This is the same above. The appeal heavily lies in how the text is utilized. The whole design contains a couple of typefaces from the 19th century, the text was written in various sizes and they created patterns in bolding them to make them appear as if some words are jumping forward and others recede. The unique design of fonts, topped with the reason that they did it “just so” gives us a nudge to look closely and spot the differences between the words. Eventually, making us analyze the whole banner signs and posters. This is a clever use of the style retro to pique the interest of the people.
Tip #2: Incorporate Simplified Retro Graphics into Your Art
In some cases, putting a little bit of art can aid in sending the message across. If you’re familiar with Milton Glaser, take a look at his work. What’s in his art that people love him for? If you happen to look closely you will notice a subtle mix of various shapes, textual elements, and skillful artwork blended to produce a 60/s art deco fusion. It offers a glimpse of two periods in the past and emphasizes them both in different ways, creating a challenge in the viewers’ expectation of the type of elements that the poster should include and making it imperative for them to take a closer look. Some contemporary promotional materials can easily get lost in the sea of all the other “modern” designs. But these retro-themed ideas for your promo campaign can surely turn heads as they don’t normally see this in today’s climate.
Tip #3: Go All-In With Your Retro Ideas
This part focuses on impressing your viewers with all the tricks you got. For instance, a poster produced by Morla Design borrows the idea from the past’s “photomontage” style, the one that hits you with a number of radiating lines, bright hues, and a big graphic placed in the middle that normally tells you what it’s all about. It is optimism in the form of art. It works best in any vertical banner or poster and with a couple of tweaks, may actually work in other promo materials too. If you’re the type of person who’s bold and goes straight to the point, this is your best bet.
The Bottom Line
If you are an artist who is aiming to promote yourself, sometimes, it pays to go over the past and blend it with the modern ones for you to achieve your desired results. While designing and manufacturing business signs is no new practice, mixing it with retro style helps in differentiating them from other artists’ methods is a whole new level. You can try to be subtle by putting all texts, mix them with a couple of graphics in a pretty reserved way, or go all the way and be as bold as you want. The choice is all yours. Whatever your chosen approach is, your ideas to mix different periods together and making sure that they blend will help pique the interest of your viewers. And if you’re lucky to do it right, you’ll gather a lot of new fans when they see your retro signs hit the streets.