It was 1971. Billboard’s top single of the year was Joy to the World, performed by Three Dog Night. Other radio hits included Rod Stewart’s Maggie May, Joan Baez’s The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On?, Paul Mcartney’s Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey, and Janis Joplin’s Me and Bobby McGee. Check out the whole 1971 Hot 100, it’s amazing. In France, you might have heard a lot from Les Poppys, or Nicoletta singing Mamy Blue. Monaco won Eurovision that year with Séverine’s fabulous performance of “Un banc, un arbre, une rue.” 1971 also took music away with the deaths of Jim Morrison, Louis Armstrong, and Igor Stravinsky, to name just 3 of the many greats lost that year.
If you went to the movies in 1971, perhaps you saw Love Story, the French Connection, Diamonds are Forever, or the Patton/MASH double bill. If you were watching The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson on January 1, 1971, you would have seen the very last televised cigarette commercial in the United States. If you were watching television in Ireland, you might have seen Ireland’s first color broadcast with that year’s Eurovision Contest. Back in the USA, All In The Family was hugely popular, whereas 1971 was also the year of the weird “Rural Purge” when shows set in the country were overwhelmingly cancelled, irrespective of whether they were popular or not.
In the art world, Francis Bacon’s 1971 show at the Grand Palais marked his peak to that point, with him being called Britain’s “greatest living painter.” But at the show, Bacon was contending with shock and grief, as his muse and lover George Dyer had killed himself only 2 days earlier. In New York, 1971 was the year Andy Warhol did his brightly colored Electric Chair screenprints, and working with Billy Name, the art for the Rolling Stones Sticky Fingers album. On October 1, 1971 Stéphane Breitweiser was born, the astoundingly skilled art thief that stole enough paintings to grow a massive collection of 16th and 17th century masters…which he kept in his bedroom at his mother’s house.
It’s easy to see why Vintage Voyage would name a fantastic graphics set after this eventful year, and we haven’t even mentioned Marcia Brady…for example, the February 1, 1971 Brady Bunch episode “The Liberation of Marcia Brady” where Marcia joins the all-male Frontier Scouts to prove she’s just as good as the guys, and she aces every test…but we didn’t mention that, no, as Marcia Brady is too powerful, enigmatic, undefinable, perennial. So we didn’t.
So yes, it’s easy to see why Vintage Voyage would share our intrigue with 1971. The 1971 Retro Graphics Collection captures the best of that year with wild yet cozy imagery—patterns, posters, backgrounds, landscape elements, rainbows, mushrooms, abstractions. Check it out!
The bright colors and retro groove will put your project in the bullseye of 1970s nostalgia, a perennial winner wherever applied: fashion, television, film, art, advertising, packaging, websites, storefronts, hospitality, all over your custom van. The visuals associated with 1970s popular culture are a guaranteed feel-good addition, as the decade was somehow innocent and permissive, experimental yet safe. This interesting sunny blend comes out all over the place in this brightly colored, super-fun collection.
It’s The 1971 Retro Graphics Collection from the time voyagers at Vintage Voyage Design. As always, it’s smooth sailing into the past, this time over 50 years ago to moments that were familiar and modern, but perhaps lighter, if only in our glossy perceptions. And that sweet essence is available here for any project that wants to hit the perfect groovy note.
