I grew up with atomic age symbols like the above as many of you no doubt did. In the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies they were everywhere and part of the fabric of popular culture.
I happened to notice a wonderfully simple but evocative symbol on the side of the Corgi Lincoln Continental die-cast, below and recalled how similar symbols used to appear particularly on one-armed bandits in the penny arcades of my youth.
Similar symbols seemed to be everywhere back then: art, cars and household items like posters, cards and crockery. I suppose they are types of stars.
I do miss this graphical style, which I suppose is encompassed by terms like retro and kitsch these days. Does anyone know the history of the atomic age symbols?
Don't know the history of the graphics, but the atom symbol is meant to be a drawing of what an atom looks like, small central nucleus and electrons whizzing about in certain allowed orbits. Except they're not really!
ReplyDeleteI wonder how we would represent it nowadays Kev? I happened to have a nostalgic play on some old one armed bandits in Whitby on Saturday. Those old graphics were still there and the machines had brand names like Olympus and Excelsior. Wonderful!
ReplyDeleteThe style owes much to the early 20th century Futurism and Constructivism, and subsequent styles such as Surrealism, Cubism, and Dada. Even though very much outside the mainstream before the war, the hard edge focus on planes of color and line as well as the minimalist style and the usage of new techniques such as photo-montage and collages are adopted by many postwar commercial artists. Typical artists you can reference are Mondrian, Miro, Duchamp, Man Ray, and Picasso. In many ways it is still with us today as much of that "Apple" design style follows this modernist style.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting Zubie. Its a style I grew up with it and one I miss.
ReplyDeleteStrangely enough, the Lincoln Continental hood ornament always made me think of the early ITC logo:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWzMNOTK-HU
See what you mean Richard. A fine retro logo. I saw an old logo the other day for a different UK Tv company, ATV, which I think was Anglia maybe. Very simple retro lettering, Although I also recall Anglia TV having a Knight on Horseback symbol just before a wildlife programme called Survival came on. I used to love that show.
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