The Return of Retro

Bell bottoms were in. Technology (as we know it today) was in its infancy. The hippie movement was well-known. The explosion in popularity of the commercial Internet was still another couple of decades away.

This removal from today’s tech stressors might be the reason visual artists of the day could dig deep and hone in on textures would really connect with their audiences, regardless of whether those audiences were art lovers or just consumers.

To understand why patterns from this decade are staging a comeback, it’s crucial to get a sense of what inspired these décor sensibilities in the first place. Here are some choice examples of this style, so you can get up to speed:

Back in the 70s, you had upheaval in the U.S. as people from different walks of life came to realize that the system was rigged against them. In a geopolitical sense, you could also apply that to many parts of the world. To say that this sounds familiar today in contemporary times would be too cliché. However, looking around at today’s social changes and global developments, it’s quite tempting to draw a comparison. Then again, upheaval is a frequent theme in human history, cutting across all cultures.

That said, it’s against this backdrop that 70s design developed. When there’s a lot going on in the culture, design is usually one of the first industries to try to express these changes.

While the 60s still had their fill of more conservative styles like Mid-century Modern, by the end of the decade, the psychedelic stylings of the hippie movement signaled a more radical approach to design. To be sure, some of the traits of the 70s were just continuations of the hippie mentality of the prior decade. Instead of the tried, tested, and true shapes and colors of the post-World War II aesthetic, the 70s flirted with experimentation and playfulness.

This sense of experimentation and play shone through in something as approachable as even the paper flower pattern that we now associate with the decade.