Ahh Retro…what a bizarre concept. It’s incredible to imagine that simply because something was fabricated in an era before our own, regardless of what it is, that it could suddenly acquire a brand new level of kitsch value.

With little to no discretion, vintage has sort of taken over. Those tight Levi’s and old school Nikes are no longer the uniform of the bleak hipster ‘sub’cultures. Recreations of vintage t-shirts are sprawled across popular clothing chains like American Eagle or Hollister and the even that plain, brandless hoodie from American Apparel has become an advertisement of its own. Old pop cans are ‘vintage chic’; toys, cookbooks, plates. It doesn’t matter what the item is, as long as it’s old it can be blessed with the funky, avant-garde image that is close to impossible to emulate. Although it sounds oddly oxymoronic to say, vintage is in, so it is probably useful to learn a few vintage tricks of the trade for Photoshop; see how close you can get to the real thing.

Smashing Magazine has a slew of Vintage and Retro Photoshop Tutorials for your creative pleasure. Smashing Magazine also has an excellent article about the merits of using vintage styles in web design.

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