The two words are used as if they meant the same thing, and they do not. Vintage means the print is old — an original sheet from the period, or a faithful reproduction of a specific historical poster. Retro means the print is new, made now, in the visual language of an earlier decade. One is a document; the other is a design decision. Almost everything sold online as vintage is in fact retro, and knowing which you are buying changes what you should expect from it.
The difference in practice
| Vintage | Retro | |
|---|---|---|
| Origin | a poster that existed then | a design made now |
| Colour | limited by the printing of the day | chosen to look limited |
| Typography | whatever the printer had | a revival typeface |
| Format | odd, often not ours | made to fit modern sizes |
| Condition | ageing is part of it | clean, unless faked |
Our reproductions of period work are printed on new paper at modern sizes, which is the honest description of nearly everything in the vintage and retro collection. They are not old objects. What they carry is the design.
The three families worth knowing
Travel posters. The richest source, roughly 1890 to 1960. Railway companies, shipping lines and later airlines commissioned artists to sell a destination in one image seen from a moving tram, so the compositions are simple, the horizons are high and the colour is flat. They read well at a distance and hold a large format better than most old material, because they were designed to be read across a station concourse. City subjects overlap with the maps and cities prints.
Exhibition posters. Museum and gallery announcements, mostly post-war. Typography does the work, often with one image and a date. They suit a hallway or a stairwell because they are meant to be read while walking. Be aware that a mid-century exhibition poster is frequently still in copyright — the design belongs to whoever made it, not to the museum that hung it — which is why the honest ranges are thinner here than the internet suggests.
Advertising prints. Drinks, cycles, soap, tinned food. The loudest of the three, and the funniest. They work best where the subject fits the room: an aperitif print in a kitchen or dining area rather than a bedroom.
Audrey Hepburn - Breakfast at Tiffany´s Poster
Cat in Window Poster
Flower Harvest - Annika Persson
Vintage Cover poster
Vintage Magazine Cover poster
Vintage Magazine Cover poster
Why the formats are awkward
Original posters were printed to whatever the press and the hoarding took, which is why so many old sheets are strange proportions. Ours are re-set to our five sizes, so the ratio changes from the original in most cases.
| Format | Ratio | What it suits |
|---|---|---|
| 21×30 and 30×42 | 1:1.41 (A4, A3) | text-led exhibition designs |
| 50×70 | 1:1.4 | travel and advertising |
| 70×100 | 1:1.43 | a single travel poster carrying a wall |
An original from the period will almost never match those numbers, so if you buy a genuine old sheet elsewhere, measure it before assuming our frames fit. The full set of figures is in the size guide.
Framing them
Period design usually wants a mount, and we do not sell one — no passepartouts, no mat boards. Our prints are made to fill the frame edge to edge instead, which suits travel and advertising work, where the image ran to the paper edge anyway. It suits typographic exhibition designs less well; if a white border matters to you, the mount guide explains what it does and where to have one cut.
Black frames suit advertising and exhibition prints, where the design is already high-contrast. Oak suits travel posters, which tend to run warm — sand, sea, sun. Above 50×70 those are the only two choices anyway, and both run through every size in the frame range.