Here's One We Made Earlier is an exhibition at the Lowry celebrating 90 years of children's broadcasting.
In my view the exhibition was designed to appeal to today's kids, rather than people who enjoyed, or endured the likes of 'The Clangers' and 'Bagpuss'. There were a lot of interactive or tv displays and a disappointing lack of actual stuff. (The Imperial War Museum North suffers from a similar malaise). But none the less it triggered nostalgia. Lots of mums and dads saying things like "Oooh, I used to watch Noggin the Nog" And that's a powerful tool to deploy when you need to influence someone.
There is plenty of scope for nostalgia in graphic design. And as I’m instinctively drawn to ‘old’ stuff, it’s a direction I intend to specialise in.
This, I believe, is the most recognisable example of nostalgic design in this Country. Originally designed by the Ministry of Information in 1939, it was never used during the war and was forgotten until a copy was rediscovered in 2000. It has since been used on mugs, posters and T-shirts, and endlessly mutated into a myriad different variations. And in the process has made a great deal of money. Its power comes from the nostalgia it invokes, of the war and the blitz spirit, even to people far too young to remember the real thing.
Writing in Design Observer, Jessica Helfand said 'Nostalgia has always been a bad word for designers. Like "retro" and "vintage" it smacks of a sort of been-there-done-that ennui — looking backward instead of forward, nostalgia presents as the very antithesis of the new'. If this is true, it leaves the territory to be occupied by those people with the contextual knowledge and the desire to invoke the old. People like me.
And It helps if you're old enough to remember it first time round.
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