The Great Re-Labeling

In times long-gone, consumer packaging was comprised of text and illustration. Type was often hand-drawn by skilled artists, and the images of fruit, vegetables, people, and places that graced the labels were beautiful miniature works of lithographic art, some nearly worthy of botany guidebooks. After the 1950s or so, with color photographic reproduction becoming more cost-effective, labels began to bear photos of the contents of the packaging. As a result, the modern shopper finds himself eye-raped by a dizzying array of computer-manipulated photographs and typography. The past decade or so has seen a rekindled interest in type-driven package design. Visit any Williams-Sonoma or an upscale grocery store, and you'll find meritorious efforts at reviving the old ways, but as attractive as these "retro-style" labels are, most of them break the illusion of having been teleported from another era with too many clean, sharp edges and perfectly kerned typography.

I've always wanted a convincing retro-style kitchen, but it would be both impractical and very expensive to have vintage appliances. As a compromise, I've been in the process re-labeling all of my canned goods and other packaged goods with replicas of labels from the 1920s. I scoured the inter-webs for hours looking for high-quality scanned images of labels matching the products I ordinarily keep in my pantry. In a few cases, I had to alter real labels for products not commonly sold in the '20s, such as black beans and enchilada sauce. I printed the labels on plain paper using a good laser printer to yield a semi-gloss effect, carefully cut them out, and wrapped them around the existing labels on my canned goods (in case I needed to view cooking directions or nutrition information). Now that practically every canned item has been re-labeled, one almost feels transported back through time upon opening the cabinet and finding neat rows and columns of lithographed tomatoes, beans, corn, peaches, and pears.

I didn't stop with canned goods, though. I also came across scanned labels of Quaker rolled oats canisters and coffee can labels, which I manipulated in Photoshop to fit modern-sized containers. I want a 1920s style cereal box as well for my store-brand Cheerios (which didn't exist until the '40s, but who cares), but printing an actual cereal box is beyond my resources. I'll settle for turning a cereal box inside-out to expose the plain brown cardboard, then gluing printed labels to each side of the box. I managed to create a label in the style of Kellogg's cereal boxes from the '20s, so I think that should do nicely.

I have modern appliances, but they are all white, a very timeless color. I may replace the white knobs on my stove with black ones for a little retro appeal. Other vintage touches include a replica of an ice delivery card, a 1920s "cathedral" style radio, and a wall-mounted bottle opener. I hope to get a set of glass spice jars, to which I will affix labels derived from 1920s spice tins.