A massive collection of vintage Polynesian menu artwork and design

Sep-29-06, 9:48 am by Hanford
File under: Tiki, design

My friend Mimi Payne has launched a new website called Arkiva Tropika featuring scans from her exhaustive personal collection of Polynesian menus, postcards, matchbooks, and other ephemera. It's truly an overload of mid-century graphic design and photography, and it's great browsing as a source of design ideas, or just for fun. I've seen Mimi's collection in person and the quality and volume is staggering. At launch the site only features a fraction of her collection, but she's adding more to the site all the time and the RSS feed chronicles the latest additions.

There's scads of Tiki Bars, illustrations, and vintage typeset menu interiors, and this is really only the tip of the iceberg. I'm really excited to see this launch, I wish I had it as a resource when I was designing Forbidden Island's menu. The site features tags and searching, and was designed and programmed by Humuhumu. Congratulations Mimi!

http://www.arkivatropika.com

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Marty Weil wrote: Oct-31-06, 1:39 pm

I'm glad you featured this ephemera. Old paper is often under-appreciated. I feature similar ephemera on my blog at www.ephemera.typepad.com

I enjoy your blog and thought this was a very cool post. Thanks for featuring it.

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