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I absolutely love retro posters. For some reason the minimalist themes, simple color sets, and style that evokes a powerful feeling of nostalgia is overwhelmingly desirable, and is a style that, when done well, makes me want to buy it and put it on my wall. 

SpaceX “Olympus Mons” Poster

SpaceX is leveraging the vintage theme in an artful way - throwing back to old ski resorts and destination travel posters of the past while advertising for a product of the future. I didn’t live in the 20s, but somehow these posters make me yearn for the past and the future at the same time. We talk a lot about the multi-sensory nature of advertising; an appeal to the past, present, and future is yet another way to do that. This sleek yet artful craftiness is an important dimension for what is at its core, a hard science company. Almost no one who sees this poster actually thinks “oh cool, I’m going to buy my tickets to Mars right away!” But this type of publicity is designed to get people on their side. They are being humorous, but they are also completely serious. They are establishing a strong relationship with the public, i.e. making themselves desirable in many ways, in order to enable their breakneck climb to the top of the private space travel market. 

SpaceX “Valles Marineris” Poster

This may be my engineering instincts talking, but I’m a huge fan of duct tape. This is a product which made itself desirable despite being aesthetically...well...not. 

Let’s face it, a dull metallic grey is not the type of thing that one yearns to put all over their house, right? But even so, duct tape is a product that everyone has, everyone knows how to use, and everyone can rely on when things go wrong. It has developed its own little internet persona as the master fixer, the one tool that can solve all problems.

Desirability isn’t just about how a product looks, but about how it fits into a users life. Even though it looks horrible, it is always what you need when you need it, and I see no better way to establish a relationship with a product than that. Duck® Brand duct tape has noted this inconsistency and attempted to remedy the situation by offering a slew of different tape prints.