A Blast From The Past

Recently a New York artist named Kelsey Dake brought to our attention a charming piece of vintage Chamber memorabilia: a directory of places to stay in the Valley, apparently printed in the mid-1960s. For much of its 123-year history, the Chamber focused its efforts on attracting visitors and new residents to the Greater Phoenix area. Publications like this would have been picked up by the snowbirds who flocked here by the thousands each year, but while many of them stayed, it's likely very few examples of this type of brochure have survived. We asked Kelsey to tell us the story of her find and give us her thoughts as an artist on this classic piece of Chamber history.

GPCC: This is quite the find. How did you come across it?

Kelsey Dake: I found this brochure in the Fall of 2008 at a little antique store in South Pasadena, California while looking for stuff to use to create a piece for school. I was going through a bunch of old photographs. This place literally had three huge chests of drawers chock-full of photos and papers, and this brochure happened to be inside one of them and in perfect condition. Being from Phoenix (yes, I'm a native) I kind of freaked out and had to buy it; it was maybe $2. I didn't really have a use for it, but I felt like it needed to be rescued from that mess of papers.

GPCC: As an artist, what do you like about this particular brochure?

KD: Being an artist and an avid printmaker, I adored the overprinting, halftones and bright colors. For those who aren't familiar, printing way back in the day was pretty difficult and most printers only had four colors, cyan (blue), magenta, yellow, and black, and so what printers would do to get different colors would be to layer those four different colors. You can see on the top right panel where blue and yellow are used to make the green of the saguaro. Then to control the lightness or darkness of an image, they would control the size of the dots that made up a particular image (this being halftone), and you can see this in the blue photo of downtown looking towards Camelback. While you can still have things printed this way today (for example, most cardboard boxes with images like cereal boxes are printed in this manner), back in the 1950s and 60s this method was a lot less accurate so pieces had a lot of character and were very unique. Today, the technology is so advanced, you can't even tell things were printed this way. It was very exciting to find a well preserved, old example of this printing method.

GPCC: You can look at this and almost anyone of a certain age would say "Sixties." What was it about that time period that is so instantly recognizable?

KD: I find the 50s and 60s to be extremely exciting times in design, and am constantly inspired/influenced by them. This brochure in particular screams Midcentury Modern to me, first because of the printing method, second the bright colors, third the use of cues from that decade. The first panel with the "Motel" especially, because of the shape of that sign, think boomerang, and secondly, the architecture of the motel itself is very similar to homes and hotels being built in that time period, especially close to the Safari Hotel that used to be just north of the canal on Scottsdale Road. The bottom left panel also has a woman waterskiing in a not-so-modest bathing suit that matches her hairdo, both of which I would say are closer to the 60s just because a bathing suit like that would probably have been controversial in the 50's. From an artistic standpoint, the drawing style and color selection definitely is reminiscent of cartoons from that time. Also, for the type-nerds, a Helvetica-esque typeface makes an appearance in the top right panel, Helvetica was fairly new back then and it was everywhere in print.

GPCC: Given the approximate time period, how do you think this was put together as opposed to the ease with which we'd do it today with desktop publishing?

KD: Like I said earlier, the print process was a lot more tedious than it is today, mostly because, obviously, (personal) computers didn't exist. Everything had to be laid out on films by hand, and if you messed up then you really messed up because it wasn't as easy as hitting command-z. Nothing was easy; type had to be laid out by hand. It's not like there was some keyboard or computer a person could hop onto and use. Once everything was laid out, then screens had to be burned and then prints could be made. But because there are four different colors, things had to be laid out accordingly. So, say you wanted to print something in orange. You would need not only one layer of film, but two, because you need both magenta and yellow to make orange. So getting all the elements to work together was really tricky; that why sometimes the colors look like they're "bleeding" or are "off" because you would be working with four different layers of film. Today, you can do the same procedure in photoshop simply by clicking a couple of options. So, for obvious reasons, color printing was very expensive. The only full four color part of the entire brochure was the outer cover (which you see); everything on the inside was printed in one color which, back then, would have been leaps and bounds more affordable.

GPCC: Why do you think "retro" things like this (even though this is technically not intended to be retro, it just appears that way now) appeal to people from an aesthetic or nostalgic sense?

KD: I would have to guess that "retro" stuff has high aesthetic appeal mostly because it is hand done. I mean, everyone knows when something is done by hand, or is "custom," it makes it unique and therefore special. A painting of a flower at Target might sell for $20, but the original of that painting might go for 100 times that for the same reason of being hand done and therefore unique. I think a lot of people realize that hand done things have an intrinsic value worth seeking out and preserving. Or I could be totally wrong and people just like retro things for their bold use of color and clean lines. Most printed advertising and marketing is SO over the top these days and usually lacks good taste/choices. I think people might just appreciate the design choices better. Or maybe people who were around when things like these were being printed might just appreciate it for the memories. Almost no one covers suitcases with stickers from their travels anymore, but I guess maybe they used to? And maybe remembering things like those are important to some people. I really can't say for sure why people do the things they do!

Thanks to Kelsey Dake for helping out on our trip down Memory Lane. You can visit Kelsey's website here.

Do you have any old Chamber memorabilia in your garage or attic? Let us know about it! You might be featured in a future Blast From The Past article. Send your info to ktomasch [at] phoenixchamber [dot] com.