There has been concern that if an ad is for a product someone can still purchase today then it is more an ad, and less something retro/vintage.
Anyone have any thoughts either way? I may do a poll.
Edit: This appears pretty conclusive. There will be no changes at this time. Some have mentioned the lack of hard timeframe but until that becomes an obvious issue is prefer to keep it vague.
Well, yeah. It’s about the aesthetics, nostalgia, history, design, and vibe, not the availability of the product.
I mean, c’mon, there’s companies that have been around for over a century selling the same basic things. Those ads are no less interesting than the ones from defunct companies in any way. If anything, a company that’s still around, products that are still around, may be more interesting because we could go and compare old ads to new ones on our own and see how ad design has changed over time.
One of my hobbies is knives. Specifically, slipjoint knives, like the old school “grandpa” type of things. Just the history of Buck, one of the more well known companies is a book’s worth of ad design changes. Looking at other companies like Schrade, case, or boker, etc, and comparing the way they differed vs the overall trends in knife advertising is a thing knife geeks can spend a lifetime puttering around with. None of that is less interesting because the companies still sell the same or similar products.
Barring currently available products is, frankly, a dumb idea. Now, a time limit of when an ad was published last, that would be fitting for the C/'s theme. Say, something like 20 years as the cutoff makes sense, maybe even 30. But that’s a different thing