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There's a shop in Barcelona that sells vintage prints from artists long gone.
On one of my visits, I found myself completely drawn to the way they used to illustrate flowers, fruits, objects, animals. A real exercise in consistent observation, one that's been lost in a generation that has normalised looking for inspiration in pins.
I do it too. But I believe creativity and art direction deserve more than that.
I once used these archives as references to illustrate natural ingredients for a beverage series with a completely different style, but studying them helped me understand the anatomy of each element.
Where else do you look for inspiration?
Mostly places where the drawing had a job to do: old seed catalogues, pharmacopoeia plates, machine part diagrams. The constraint is the teacher there, someone had to render the thing so it could be identified rather than so it would look good in a grid. The other one for me is...
Exactly! And really glad I'm not the only one who makes the supermarket a must in every new place. 🙌
Must have been a very precious place to visit.
That is so beautiful for inspiration!
Thank you! Hopefully it sparks something good 🙏🏽
The beverage series example is such a good case for this, using botanical archive illustrations for anatomy reference rather than style reference is a completely different muscle than pulling from Pinterest. When you were studying those old prints for the ingredient work, did...
Yes, I actually went in with a clear idea of how an ingredient could look "cool," but studying the archives I realized the real benefit was coming from a part of the plant I hadn't even considered.
This is gorgeous!
I knowww 🥹
Those old botanical plates are a masterclass in observation that no stock library can fake. Wild how a shop full of dead artists still teaches composition better than most courses.
Totally, the constraint of having to be understood is what makes those prints so instructive.
🌼
Love this perspective. Old botanical archives have such a different kind of visual richness, especially when you study how much observation went into every shape. It’s a great reminder that inspiration doesn’t have to come from another designer’s feed.
100% Sometimes you have to go further back.
WOW
🥹🥹
Old packaging and apothecary labels are my go-to, where the illustration had to identify the thing and sell it at once. Same lesson as your prints: someone drew it to be understood, not to trend, and that constraint teaches structure a feed never will.
That's such a good way to put it, drawn to be understood, not to trend. That's the lesson.
bellisimo! I would have my whole house filled with these if I could.
Exacto! Tengo la casa llena de plantas reales pero ganas de estos posters no me faltan 🥹
When translating those meticulous century old botanical details into modern branding how do you decide what to simplify versus what to keep?
Actually it worked the other way around, the brand style was already defined before I went into the archives. So the question wasn't what to simplify, it was what from the reference fit within the system we already had.
Beautiful, thanks for sharing this!
Thank you for taking the time to look 🙏🏽
Studying primary archives over digital moodboards brings a level of anatomical precision and structural craft that modern trends just can't match.
That precision is exactly what makes them so useful as a reference
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So, what is ROSI?
A few cans.
Five colours.
One very simple fish.
A ridiculously large wordmark.
And hopefully proof that everyday products don’t have to look everyday.
The ridiculously large wordmark is the entire personality, tinned fish has never strutted like this. Proof that confidence is a design decision, not a budget line.
What happens when propaganda designed to erase the self gets pointed at the self instead?
Soviet propaganda spent 70 years trying to erase the individual soul in favour of the collective machine. I pointed that exact visual language at the thing it was built to suppress.
I kept flat 2–3 colour print, no gradients, no softness, ink-on-paper style, and honestly, I didn't expect it to come out this cool.
Does it give spirituality or propaganda vibes for you?
What other era and modern theme you think would be an interesting blend?
Reads more propaganda to me honestly, the flat color-blocking keeps it too graphic to feel purely spiritual even with the lotus pose. I'd love to see this same treatment turned on social media aesthetics, that curated "perfect life" feed culture feels like its own quiet kind of erasure.
What if Google Maps had been designed in the 1920s? 👀
For the #revival challenge, I reimagined Google Maps through the visual language of Soviet Constructivism.
Routes become bold diagonals, turns become oversized arrows, and ETA and distance become strong typographic statements. Navigation stops feeling like a quiet interface and starts feeling like a piece of graphic propaganda telling you exactly where to go.
Such a fun exercise in taking something extremely familiar and asking how differently it could have been designed in another time.
Your turn!
What modern product would you send back in time, and to which era? 👀
Curious whether the diagonals fought you at phone size — Constructivist posters were built for one long look from across a room, while a nav screen only gets half-second glances from someone already moving. For your question: airline safety cards, sent back to 1960s Swiss...