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Retro Rainbow Tutorials and Design Showcase
Although often used in the wrong context, the motif of ’70s Retro Rainbow designs seems to occur in many modern designs – from products designs to posters and web designs. The rainbow colors are particularly eye-catching and lively; they may provide the design with a dynamics and help to vividly convey the message of the graphic work. In past few months I came across to many artworks and new concepts of retro designs which gave me a thought to gather few for this inspirational post.
Below you’ll find a showcase of beautiful Retro Rainbow designs and resources. They range from popular Flickr photos to unconventional sources of inspiration, from helpful tutorials to useful related tools. Share your favorite sources of inspiration in the comments.
You may want to consider browsing through the following related posts:
- Retro and Vintage in Modern Web Design
- Celebration Of Vintage and Retro Design
- 35 Beautiful Vintage and Retro Photoshop Tutorials
- Vintage and Retro Typography Showcase
[By the way, did you know there is a brand new Smashing Wordpress Book? Push WordPress past its limits!]
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Akhtar Sheikha is a freelance web and graphic designer as well as developer. He is the author and owner of 2experts Design, a design blog with great inspirational posts. You can follow 2experts design on Twitter.
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April 19th, 2009 5:39 amWOW! I like 5 design and I download to do myself !
Thanks
Atiq - 3April 19th, 2009 5:42 am
Great list and really useful for designers :)
Regards
- 4April 19th, 2009 5:49 am
The link on the very first item links to the wrong page (the link text/caption is also wrong, there’s no 3d pixel stretching going on there)
(SM) Thank you for the correction, the link was updated.
- 5April 19th, 2009 6:06 am
Looks like a good collection there. I might have to give a few of them a go.
- 6April 19th, 2009 6:13 am
Wow, this is great.
I might use this techniques for our new school logo design.
Thanks SM - 7April 19th, 2009 7:11 am
Thrilled to see my tutorial at the top of the roundup :P Very nice collection!
- 8April 19th, 2009 7:18 am
thats a nice list! :)
- 9April 19th, 2009 7:18 am
the colorburned links are wrong also, but great collection!
(SM) Thanks, the links are fixed now.
- 10April 19th, 2009 7:21 am
A lot of 2007/2008 trends but some nice tutorials indeed.
- 11April 19th, 2009 8:36 am
Fourth to the bottom with the tree, by Whoa Oh, isn’t by him – he just has it on his flicker. He even says its not his but he doesn’t know who to give credit to.
Looks like JP33 to me. He should be included anyway, his stuff uses a lot of rainbows and is better than everything I see here.
I do like the stuff by FalkPhotoDesign though.
- 12April 19th, 2009 8:56 am
Thanks a bunch. Some of them are pretty amazing.
- 13April 19th, 2009 1:21 pm
This is a great post for inspiration and tutorials, you can use in soo many ways…..
Thanks
- 14April 19th, 2009 3:14 pm
Really nice designs, its hard to find vintage stuff like this ^_^
- 15April 19th, 2009 3:19 pm
i made something with rainbows and corel, if anyone’s not rainbowed out http://runningonsentences.deviantart.com/art/In-Joy-116547020
- 16April 19th, 2009 4:58 pm
Great collection, what about… http://dotau.deviantart.com/art/Clouds-of-Colour-49596643
- 17April 19th, 2009 5:17 pm
Wow, that is like WAY cool dude, I like it.
RT
- 18April 19th, 2009 5:17 pm
Thanks for the feature SM!
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- 20April 19th, 2009 7:38 pm
Hey! Great link but you forgot my rainbow Photoshop tutorial:
http://www.vladstudio.com/photoshoptutorials/tutorial.php?rainbows_making_of
:-) Thanks! - 21April 19th, 2009 7:38 pm
Retro art always has a tendency to come back in some form..but now technology can create such beautifully detailed works..
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- 23April 19th, 2009 9:09 pm
to be honest there were some examples that arent up to a SmashingMag-level. I expected a little higher quality. Nevertheless thanks for the work, its a pretty big list.
- 24April 19th, 2009 11:33 pm
Nice! Very nice!
Thank you. - 25April 19th, 2009 11:59 pm
This is really useful for web and graphics designers. Thanks for providing such inspiration.
- 26April 20th, 2009 12:08 am
“Me as my own Superstar”
It looks like a rainbow afro, and is super cool.Thanks,
Robert - 27April 20th, 2009 1:02 am
That is without the doubt the best i’ve seeen !
Love it ! - 28April 20th, 2009 1:49 am
Perfect timing. My latest brief is to produce a rainbow inspired page/microsite for one of my clients! Good work!
- 29April 20th, 2009 1:53 am
Good article but I echo that this list should have referenced ISO50. Scott Hansen’s work is amazing!
- 30April 20th, 2009 2:58 am
I`m I right or are those images lazy loaded?
I don`t think it`s good idea, supposing web developers haven`t got limitated internet connection or cache capacity.
I hate loading!
But the article is as usual very good :) - 31April 20th, 2009 3:22 am
Sweet!
- 32April 20th, 2009 3:50 am
@Jeff
You were correct, it is indeed by JP33: JP33.com
A correction is in order i think
- 33April 20th, 2009 6:19 am
Hey thanks for the feature :)
- 34April 20th, 2009 7:04 am
awesome, thank you very much, You have done it again smashing magazine! :)
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- 36April 20th, 2009 11:57 am
Beautiful collection, some of them are quite impressive!
- 37April 20th, 2009 2:43 pm
Great and useful post. Although I’m annoyed to find that Adobetutorialz didn’t bother to do research on the car they used before naming their tutorial. I think it’s important for all of us designers to do this before we try and publish any work we do. You don’t want to loose credibility of a designer simply for not taking the time to do a little research. That car is not a Ford Mustang. It’s a 1954 Chevy Bel Air. Sorry to be anal but just my opinion. =) Great tutorial though.
re: Retro Lighting – Ford Mustang tutorial
- 38April 20th, 2009 9:01 pm
I’m anti-rainbow, so I found no interest in this article.
- 39April 20th, 2009 10:52 pm
Nice design bro, i think i should looks more design from you, very amazing…
- 40April 21st, 2009 2:48 am
just want so say some thing “great job”
- 41April 21st, 2009 4:20 am
@ Chris : I’m right there with you, was actually just coming to post that. Being a Mustang enthusiast I was disappointed he put Mustangs with rainbows anyways, but to find that it wasn’t even a Mustang? The twerp.
- 42April 21st, 2009 9:21 pm
@ Thomas Strobl: I would say may be some designs may not inspire me but it doesn’t mean that they are sub standard. Each design has something for someone.
Nice post, cheers!
- 43April 22nd, 2009 12:54 am
superb list…
- 44April 22nd, 2009 8:47 am
thanks for inclunding me in this list….
cheers :-)
francesco - 45April 23rd, 2009 2:22 am
great Akhtar Sheikha… great ..love it..
- 46May 4th, 2009 5:58 am
@Chris: You beat me to it, even to the year! Being a Mustang owner and having modeled a ‘54 Bel Air in Lightwave, I thought I was supremely positioned to make that comment!
- 47May 4th, 2009 10:55 am
@ Everybody who commented about the Mustang…
What kind of American is it anyway who doesn’t even know what a classic Mustang looks like? And does the Bel Air really look like a classic muscle? hehe
At any rate, it was a great post, I like rainbows in general quite a bit and some of these were very well made! Mr Whizard, etc, great work.
Moonshine Design was a little cheezy though, the ugly 350Z marred it… good illustration + uninteresting photography of a low-trim-line roadster doesn’t match.
- 48May 20th, 2009 9:58 am
I’m honored that you chose to list my image among so many greats. Thanks!
- 49July 3rd, 2009 4:20 am
all of them rocks.
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Great! Very useful