The poster for Brenham, Texas features an ice cream scoop – with a 50’s pink and teal background. The city of Crockett’s has a red rocking chair – with a coonskin hat hanging off one side. And Midland’s has an oil well pump and a train with a yellow football lighting up the scene like the moon.
Designer Lance LaRue talked with the Standard about his design collection.
On his inspiration:
“I’ve always been drawn to those posters of Art Deco style and the vintage posters from the 40s and 50s even — those old tourism posters for Paris and New York and Chicago and Monaco. I just thought it would be fun to do posters that were like that but for cities that were overlooked and would never have tourism posters like – Brenham or Muleshoe.”
On the tongue-in-cheek attitude of his posters:
“The little one-liners and tag lines – ‘the city that never sleeps’ and things like that, well, I’ve got to adjust those for towns around Austin and Dallas and Houston… I added some sarcasm and humor along the way to make it a little bit more fun and playful.”
On why he won’t make posters for Dallas, Houston or San Antonio:
“Because they are vacation destinations for a lot of people. They are the big ones that do soak up a lot of the attention from Texas. But I always thought that was really one of the big draws of Texas is those little towns. So, instead of San Antonio, we’ll have San Marcos and Seguin, and different things like that.”
On his bestseller:
“Nacogdoches. That is the poster that I constantly have to go to the printer and ask for more.”
On who is buying the posters:
“It’s a lot of people who have lived in these towns and moved off and there is that nostalgia. I’ve sold to people in Mexico and France and it’s made its way around America – I’m pretty excited to see orders that come in from out of state.”