One tried-and-true method to differentiate your branding from the pack? Harken back to a bygone era. Nothing stands out from a modern onslaught of branding like vintage charm—especially if you can pick a unique style and blend its retro aesthetics with modern elements to create something entirely your own.
This guide examines seven brands with retro-inspired aesthetics to help you understand what makes them successful.
What is retro design in commerce?
Retro design in commerce refers to brands incorporating key aesthetic elements popular in a previous decade and reinventing them to appeal to modern sensibilities. Ironically, lots of brands use retro design to feel fresh, repeating old trends in a contemporary context to create something entirely new.
Companies can apply retro design to their website, marketing materials, packaging, and products.
What makes retro design appealing?
People often enjoy looking back on fun memories from their lives, and retro design provides a pleasing sense of nostalgia with a modern twist. The enduring trends from the past tend to be the ones with timeless style: designs like the Helvetica typeface, the Eames chair, and bold stripes come back into fashion over and over because they pique our visual interest.
7 examples of retro design
- Aviator Nation: ’70s surfer stripes
- Mociun: 1920s art-inspired
- Stumptown Coffee: Heritage craftsman
- Rifle Paper Co.: American Victorian Cottagecore
- Two Enlighten: Modern space age
- Chunks: Y2K teenage style
- Vacation: ’80s resort
These brands cleverly remix previous decades’ trends, using them in self-referential, ironic, surprising, or purely delightful ways to create products and brand personalities that are inventive and memorable.
1. Aviator Nation: ’70s surfer stripes
Vintage-inspired clothing brand Aviator Nation has made bold stripes in bright colors the focal point of its apparel for men, women, and children. This California-born brand takes cues from the 1970s Supergraphics trend, which originated in San Francisco, to create a retro look. Combined with soft, distressed-looking fabrics and retro-style photo shoots, it all adds up to a 1970s surf-shack vibe that helps the brand sell a vision of beachy lifestyle with a touch of nostalgic California glow. The brand also runs a concert venue in Malibu, called Dreamland, giving customers a chance to live out a vintage surf-rock fantasy—and shop—in a dynamic atmosphere.
2. Mociun: 1920s art-inspired
Jewelry designer Caitlin Mociun creates and sells retro-inspired jewelry and home goods that feel totally modern thanks to her eye for color, geometric balance, and texture. Whether it’s a wedding ring with an unusual shape or a lamp made to look like it’s made from a cube of Saltine crackers, her signature style blends two iconic early-20th-century art movements: the geometric shapes and patterns of art deco and the fragmented chaos of cubism.
3. Stumptown Coffee: Heritage craftsman
The aesthetic of Portland-bred Stumptown Coffee mirrors the personality of the city itself, which is known for being full of down-to-earth makers and appreciators of fine coffee. Its block print-inspired horseshoe logo and the tagline, “Good Luck,” call to mind the frontier-minded early Americans who headed west to seek their fortunes—the brand’s name, too, is a settler-era moniker for Portland. The ornate typography rendered in gold against the muted tones of the beans’ packaging recalls a sense of subdued formality and gives the packaging an old-fashioned look. On Instagram, Stumptown’s designers ditch the earth tones and go for a groovier, brighter palette. By combining the frontier-minded 1870s and record-grooving 1970s, Stumptown creates an aesthetic all its own.
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4. Rifle Paper Co.: American Victorian cottagecore
Illustrator Anna Bond started Rifle Paper Co. with her husband in 2009, turning what started as a stationery brand into a multimillion-dollar business with multiple offerings across home goods, apparel, and paper goods. Her signature hand-painted florals are a staple of her creative direction, though the brand’s style has evolved to feel reminiscent of a Victorian storybook, pairing vintage aesthetics with modern style. Ornate frames designed to look like antique brooches or hand mirrors are worked into the website design, while cross-stitch patterns appear across the brand’s Instagram. These details give the brand’s aesthetic a tactile, handmade quality, in keeping with the brand’s quaint, finely detailed products.
5. Two Enlighten: modern Space Age
Flash back to the mid-1950s, when the Space Race was dominating headlines and mid-century modern design was all the rage. A reaction to ornate décor, the MCM was characterized by clean lines, geometric shapes, and functional design. Perhaps due to the rapid industrialization of the post–World War II period or the Cold War’s obsession with space exploration, futuristic and otherworldly inspired design took off in the 1950s.
Los Angeles–based Two Enlighten stocks both modern and vintage furniture that lean into this aesthetic. The brand’s pieces feel like they could fit right into both the Mad Men set and contemporary homes and offices.
6. Chunks: Y2K teenage style
The early 2000s are making a major comeback—just look at the branding for Chunks, a brand making modern versions of the claw clips that were ubiquitous in that era. Chunks draws inspiration from the print landscape of early 2000s girlhood: magazines like Seventeen and CosmoGIRL!, the scribbles in a diary, scrapbooks, and early digital illustrations. Even its hero image on the homepage is an homage to a storied young-adult tradition: making a wish when the digital clock strikes 11:11.
7. Vacation: ’80s resort
Get in, babe, we’re going to Miami in the ’80s. Sunscreen brand Vacation captures the nostalgic charm of an era when the hair was big, the bikinis were high cut, and the pool was bumpin’.
The vintage typography, mustard yellows and bright blues, and retro packaging are all part of the fun. Even the photoshoots are historically accurate—you might not be able to tell the difference between Vacation’s branding and real 1980s advertisements.
How to use retro design elements in your branding
Not every retro-inspired brand goes all-in on a single decade. Sometimes a few well-chosen elements are enough to evoke a bygone era while keeping the overall look fresh. Here are popular retro elements you can include in your designs:
Vintage typography
One simple way to incorporate retro design into your branding and marketing is to use a vintage-inspired typeface. A groovy ’70s, chic art deco, or functional Swiss font can instantly change the voice and tone of a brand identity or campaign. Sometimes, it’s all you really need to hint at a bygone era, while keeping your visuals and other brand elements relatively modern.
Bold color palettes
Subtle, minimalist color palettes are very internet age; retro color palettes tend to be bold and bright, or earthy and warm. Both are more colorful than your average ecommerce site, featuring tons of white space. Want to make it feel a little more vintage? Add a color or two—or three.
Physical materials
Another way to instantly lift your design out of the digital realm and into a more tactile time is to use or reference physical objects—whether that’s natural materials like wood or sand, or retro objects like foil-stamped invitations, magazine collages, or embroidery. Emulating these textures can add context and evoke specific eras.
Retro design FAQ
What does retro design mean?
Retro design means creating products or marketing materials that deliberately look like they were designed in a past decade.
What makes a design retro?
You can create retro design by using typography, imagery, colors, and details common in a previous decade. Referencing popular objects (the Volkswagen Type 2 representing the hippie movement) or design elements (paisley patterns reminiscent of the 1970s) can make that reference clearer.
What does retro design look like?
The specific look depends on the decade you’re emulating, but popular retro design trends include funky fonts, bold or earthy color palettes, textured materials, and geometric patterns.
