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The Sunday Chronicle: Extraordinary News About Ordinary Modern Life 🗞️
For the Recraft × Contra Archive Style Challenge, I explored historical newspaper posters and lithographs by George Reiter Brill, an American lithographer, from The Met’s collection. Inspired by his 1890s advertisements for the Philadelphia Sunday Press, I imagined how that vintage newspaper aesthetic might report on our lives today.
And so, The Sunday Chronicle was born – a fictional newspaper where doomscrolling, procrastination, endless notifications, and the struggle to take a “candid” photo deserve their own dramatic headlines.
The idea was to make modern habits look like front-page scandals from another era – a little nostalgia, a little satire, and perhaps a few too many familiar situations. 😅
The result is below 👇
🔗 Explore The Sunday Chronicle
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Social post: https://lnkd.in/p/gXJn_FQQ
The Future, as They Imagined It
I used this historical furniture illustration because I loved how people and animals became the furniture itself, supporting tables or shaping entire pieces. I paired it with this image, whose visual style caught my eye. Both references come from the Wellcome Collection. That made me wonder: what would furniture look like if the designers of that time had known about laptops, headphones, drones and the other gadgets we use today? I explored that question through a custom Recraft Style and a collection of eight furniture designs, each presented with a graphite sketch.
FOLD · Writing desk
A folding laptop becomes a writing desk. Its opening movement translates into folded supports and a curved privacy panel, finished in forest green, brick red and ochre.
LOOP · Lounge chair
Over-ear headphones become a lounge chair, with circular cushioned armrests and a curved frame wrapping around the seat. Brick-red upholstery and an ochre cushion sit inside a forest-green structure.
KEY · Sideboard
Keyboard keys become six sculpted drawer fronts, arranged in two rows. Their concave surfaces and rounded edges carry over into a cobalt-blue cabinet with blush-pink and cream drawers.
FOCUS · Floor lamp
A webcam becomes an adjustable reading lamp. Its capsule-shaped head and circular lens turn into a pivoting light, combining lavender, petrol green and butter yellow.
PLAY · Sofa
A game controller becomes a two-seat sofa. Rounded grips shape the armrests, while thumbsticks inspire the circular back cushions, in burnt orange, petrol blue and blush pink.
TRACE · Bookcase
A circuit board becomes a storage system. Its pathways translate into shelves and dividers, with enclosed compartments recalling electronic components, in sage green, burgundy and pale yellow.
HOVER · Coffee table
A drone becomes a coffee table. Four branching arms support circular surfaces at different heights, combining powder blue, coral and cream.
SOUND · Bedside cabinet
A portable speaker becomes a bedside cabinet. Its circular driver becomes a drawer, while its carrying loop becomes a sculptural frame, finished in plum, peach and mint green.
The final room illustration brings all eight pieces together, showing how this imagined collection could live in a contemporary home.
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Iroha Crest Works: what if the crest makers of 1881 had our tools?
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an 1881 crest book as training data.. very good pick