70s Graphic Design Examples to Inspire Your Retro Projects RGD

Table Of Content

• Graphic Design: A Rundown of 1970s Style
• DIY Mockups For E-commerce Success: The Ultimate Guide To Boost Your Online Store
• Colorful contributions from disco and the hippie movement
• How we reviewed the list of top graphic design software
• Pop Culture
• Best for Professional-Looking Branded Content
• Support Independent Arts Journalism
• Swiss Style Simplicity:

Genially is an accessible all-in-one tool for creating interactive and animated designs. You can choose from thousands of templates or you can start from scratch to create posters, infographics, social media content, client pitches, interactive images, website sliders, and more. Best of all, Genially puts no limit on the number of creations you can make as a free user.

Graphic Design: A Rundown of 1970s Style

Robert Beatty's Design For The Weeknd's 'Dawn FM' Revels in 70s Sci-fi Retro Goodness - PRINT Magazine

Robert Beatty's Design For The Weeknd's 'Dawn FM' Revels in 70s Sci-fi Retro Goodness.

Posted: Mon, 17 Jan 2022 08:00:00 GMT [source]

For many designers, their work became an act of protest, challenging traditional hierarchies and giving voice to marginalised groups through impactful visual communication. Join us as we take a vibrant visual journey back to the 1970s – a defining time for graphic arts and creative rebellion. We'll explore the people, styles, and culture that made this decade so visionary in the design world. Whether you're a professional designer or just need to create beautiful digital art, these are the top graphic design apps we've tested. Depending on the software, graphic design applications can be expensive or accessible.

DIY Mockups For E-commerce Success: The Ultimate Guide To Boost Your Online Store

Some of the most iconic fonts from the ‘70s came from Letraset designer Colin Brignall. By incorporating minimalism and negative space into your designs, you can create a sense of balance and simplicity that contrasts with the more bold and vibrant elements of 70s graphic design. Experiment with simple color schemes, geometric shapes, whitespace, and subtle typography to achieve this look. Many wondered if bold cover art would still matter as album art shifted away from vinyl and CDs towards digital catalogues. But Saville has continued to produce iconic designs, from Pulp's compilation album to projects with contemporary bands like Manic Street Preachers. Saville's album covers are instantly recognisable triumphs of graphic design that forever changed how albums could be represented visually.

Colorful contributions from disco and the hippie movement

Two graphic designers are trying to preserve NASA's famous 1970s 'Worm' logo - The Verge

Two graphic designers are trying to preserve NASA's famous 1970s 'Worm' logo.

Posted: Thu, 03 Sep 2015 07:00:00 GMT [source]

As with its other Creative Cloud stablemates, Adobe continues to enhance InDesign with tools for the ever-changing publishing landscape, as well as adding creativity and ease-of-use features. You also get unmatched typography tools with Adobe Fonts and stock media from Adobe Stock. Illustrator is undeniably for any professional illustrator or graphics editor, but hobbyists who like to create visual art also can benefit from it, too. Those who are unwilling to pay a recurring subscription fee, however, should look to one of the other products included here, like Affinity Designer or CorelDraw. The pro version of Gravit is paid and has more advanced features like advanced export options, offline version, more color space, etc.

While newspapers and magazines worked to make themselves more austere and minimalist, the ads going in them did the opposite. Advertising and marketing collateral went wild, either boasting vivid colors in Funkadelic color schemes or patterns or using simple black and white. Bold, bright and beautiful, the 1960s brought color to the oftentimes drab remnants of 1950s culture.

Otl Aicher is a German graphic designer and typographer who is best known for his work for the 1972 Summer Olympics. He boldly used pictograms and mixed it with a bright palette developed from the color of the Bavarian system and a strict grid system. With these elements, he managed to create stunning visual identities that earned him his reputation in graphic design. He is also known for creating an influential public signage system that utilised a simple stick figure graphic.

Best for Professional-Looking Branded Content

And if you’re more into vibrant rainbow hues, learn how you can create and save your own color choices in Vectornator. Once you’ve designed your custom alphabet, you can use an app like iFontMaker to compile your characters into a font file that can be saved and used again later. In contrast to the ’60s psychedelics, the 70s showcased simple and flat shapes, often arranged into recurring patterns and used in background art deco or home decor. We will start with one hit magazine cover example from the early 70s, a trendy 70s package design of cornflakes, and one great Coca-Cola illustration. Advancements in printing technology allowed for innovative design techniques, such as phototypesetting and offset printing.

Support Independent Arts Journalism

Other designers like Halston and Yves Saint Laurent also embraced bold colours, prints and shapes in defining 70s style. Designers responded to this cultural upheaval, using graphic design as a tool for activism and expression. Posters, logos, illustrations, and other designs gave visual form to the ideas fueling these social movements.

The image you are creating on the graphic design app can be turned into a fully editable vector path. The advanced features in this app are accessible by purchasing it only. This graphic design app is built for Android and iOS devices, which can be used to create vector graphics.

Along with portable cassette players, the first digital wristwatch, and Apple Computer 1 (Apple’s earliest product), new devices for typesetting were introduced. The Letraset and the Visual Graphics PhotoTypositor techniques emerged and provided greater freedom for designers. Creatives began breaking the conventions of typography with more irregular and varied letterforms. As a result, the lava lamp-inspired bubble lettering and free-form font swashes that capture the era were born, and continue to be popular typography choices today. Challenge the viewer’s perception with this style that uses geometric shapes, patterns, and contrasting colors to create optical illusions.

Inkscape can get you started with vector graphics, and it is completely free and open-source. However, it forces you to do without some major creature comforts, such as easy installation on macOS. If you want an easy, more affordable entrée into the world of vector graphics design, CorelDraw is worth a look. It also can serve professionals who want some of its special effects tools. And if you don't want to pay a subscription, Corel lets you buy to own for a one-time price.

Inspired by nightlife, bright neon lights and endless parties, these fonts in capital letters caused quite a stir. It was used mainly to describe something particularly casual or unusual. Depending on the context, it can also mean excellent, modern or remarkable. Countercultural movements and revolutions found expression in bright colors, psychedelic aesthetics and free-spirited typography.

Bright colors stood out even more against black and white photography using vivid shades. Adding collage elements to photography was popular too, and eye-catching typography was used to enhance photos, particularly in popular magazines such as Rolling Stone. Illustration didn’t disappear, but it was used more to support photography instead of standing on its own. Psychedelic design is still a big trend today, defined by its fluid shapes, hand-drawn typography, vibrant color, and dream-like themes.

Feature image created using items from a_slowik, themefire and creativemedialab on Envato Elements. An era that brought us hair metal, synth-pop, hip-hop beats, and lovelorn ballads, there’s no question that the 80s were an incredibly diverse time for music. Gracing us with the likes of The Cure, Whitney Houston, David Bowie, Michael Jackson, and ACDC, the 80s decade was a big turning point for the development of digital music. Breaking the conventions of traditional typography, this style is becoming increasingly popular today – particularly in advertisements, memes and personal branding. You can also transform digital Procreate sketches into vectors by simply importing your file into Vectornator. You can trace your characters by hand using the Pen Tool, or for a quicker workflow, use the Auto Trace tool.

As the text is an integral part of graphic design, Inkscape has a powerful text tool at your disposal. There are thousands of visuals to choose from within Genially’s interface from vectors and image libraries (Unsplash, Giphy, and Pixabay are integrated within the editor) to maps and charts. You can also make any element interactive and add animation effects to it in seconds. The retro theme has been so popular lately that I decided to create a collection of 70s graphic design elements that you can use in your work. In this list, you’ll find the best patterns, flowers, icons, fonts, and other retro nostalgic design elements.

Designers embraced vivid colour palettes, flowing organic shapes, and optical illusions. Psychedelic posters advertised concerts and events with fantastical artwork that echoed the trippy light shows of the venues. Avant-garde typography broke free of strict modernist conventions with wiggly, hand-drawn letters or futuristic, space-age fonts. The 1970s – a decade of social change and creative experimentation that ushered in a new era of graphic design.