A full page advertisement in Flight, today, from mid war – 1942. A neat graphic to show Bristol’s aircraft (here an approximate plan view of a Beaufort or Blenheim) on a repeat cloud pattern. An excellent, unusual design concept. James Kightly, Vintage Aero Writer. Source Flight Global archive.
Daily Orient Arrow
On today’s Poster we have a request to use airmail (poste aerienne – and remember our recent aeroplane postman?) aboard the orient arrow which flew to Athens and Ankara in one day from Paris. A lovely 1930s(?) French airmail poster, full of neat period details. James Kightly, Vintage Aero Writer. Image found on the internet.
Pan-Concorde-Am
Today we have a couple of monochrome artworks of a ‘retro future’ – two proposals that never came to pass. Posted by Geoff Hall on the Facebook BOAC page here. Geoff adds: “These pics were in a Bristol Evening Post supplement celebrating the flight of Concorde March 69. The Pan Am one is particularly…
Rolls Roundel to Sweep
Today’s Poster. A really strong monochrome graphic design from 1937 for a Rolls Royce engine, where the aircraft is led around the roundel. Interestingly, the Rolls Royce Merlin isn’t named, here, and the aircraft type – hard to identify – is, conversely named as the Fairey Battle. By the time actual combat was joined, in…
Story of Some Sticks
Something not often seen in detail. This is the Italian Fascist symbol cut from the fuselage of an unnamed Italian Regia Aeronautica aircraft during World War Two and kept as a trophy by an RAAF airman, and previously on display at the RAAF Museum Point Cook. (Excuse the lighting hot spots in the image.) Captured…
Mind the TREE!
Cranky, ‘homemade’ aircraft are a longtime staple of children’s illustration, but we mustn’t forget they would’ve seemed very different to readers in the early decades of heavier-than air flight in the early Twentieth Century – rather as we would look at homemade Mars Rovers or the like today. Here’s a somewhat eerie illustration by Austrian…
Calling the Costs
A newspaper advert from September 1944, late in the war, as even then people realise Germany was probably going to be defeated, Italy had changed sides and Japan was very much on the defensive. The artwork isn’t particularly exceptional – pretty average in both senses as a newspaper piece in the era. The Avro Lancaster…
Through the Prop
Something different again, thanks to my friend and colleague Chad Matthew Hill of Django Studios. Books with see-through pages, or pages that overlay onto the next are usually regarded as kids’ stuff, but here we can see a very adult use in explaining the complex mechanism of the Hamilton Standard ‘Hydromatic’ feathering propeller*. Here’s a…
Changing Uniform Fashion
It is often forgotten that military formal uniforms are as much fashion and design driven as they are to provide uniformity to their wearers. One area where it is extremely obvious is in the development of women’s uniforms in the military air forces of World War Two. This is because of the newness of putting…
Where’s Your Seat?
Today’s Poster. Putting the reader or viewer ‘in’ the story or picture is a primary tool of marketing. Putting the reader in the literal hot seat is a logical, powerful take here. The aircraft is the Handley Page Halifax of the RAF’s Bomber Command, rather than the more often used Avro Lancaster. James Kightly, Vintage…
A Year of Aviation Illustration & Art 