'50s Style Halftone Designs
- Skillful artists of the '50s combined sumptuous line drawings with halftone, most notably in comic books. Augmenting a drawing with halftone allowed artists to attain a level of depth and realism that was otherwise unachievable on their monochromatic medium. The technique was frequently used to design text boxes, special lettering, characters, backgrounds or even entire scenes. Halftone gave publishers the power to cheaply mass produce comics and graphic novels, allowing subscribers to choose the popular publications that get re-released in fine printing editions.
- The printing press began to perfect the halftone technique in the '50s, and advertisers also took advantage of the cost-effective medium. Many halftone ad designs of the decade depict people using a newfangled product or service, overzealous from how exciting and useful it proved. Modern t-shirt designs parody the intense enthusiasm of this type of vintage ad. Advertising designs of the '50s frequently included atomic stars, geometric shapes and boomerangs, making these shapes icons of the period.
- The wide usage of halftone in the '50s makes the technique viable today for artists interested in achieving a decades-old look. Professional photo-editing and graphic design programs contain tools that help users accomplish halftone effects, effectively aging the appearance of recent digital photographs. Occasionally, the dot structure of halftone is applied to images, not to establish tone as the technique originally intended, but strictly to create a vintage appeal. The style is so popular that applications for modern cellular phones have been developed that allow amateur photographers to halftone their pictures.
