In all areas of design the trends of the past can inspire the variations of the future.  We all know this, and have invariably made studies of what’s come before in our own areas of interest.

However, without a large library and a lot of time, it can be difficult to consolidate the images of the past.  Thankfully, several online archives and indices may have already done the work for you:

For example, the Duke University Library maintains three digital collections of early Canadian and US print advertisements that collectively house more than 16,000 scanned images from the 1850’s to the 1950’s.  Each of these archives may be searched online by keyword.

• http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/adaccess/
• http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/eaa/
• http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/mma/

For a more modern collection of advertisements, you may wish to visit the AdForum, a searchable catalog of 90,000 advertisements in various formats from the past decade.  In addition to keyword searches, you can also sort through their collection by business sector, medium, products, dates, and involved celebrities among others.

• http://www.adforum.com/index.asp

And while I don’t watch much television anymore, one of the highlights of my broadcast year remains the annual Clio awards.  With the possible exception of the Super Bowl, the Clio awards showcase the single largest televised concentration of funny and clever advertising.  However TV is not the only thing that that the Clio’s reward, they also honor billboards, posters, radio, interactive design, and more, and of the award winning ads for the past 50 years can be viewed on their website, which can be sorted by medium, year, title, product, or agency.

• http://www.clioawards.com/archive/

Unfortunately, old ads do not remain in the public view indefinitely.  We only have so much room for the past before we start taking away from our space for the present.  In my youth I had the good fortune to visit the Breck Shampoo Hall of Fame on the first floor of the Dial building in Phoenix, Arazona.  However, when Dial moved their headquarters to Scottsdale Arizona, the one room museum did not make the move with them, and the collection of ~180 pastel and oil portraits were transferred to the Smithsonian.

While you can view a written summary of what the Smithsonian Breck Girl collection contains, the full collection of paintings is no longer on view either in person or online.

• http://americanhistory.si.edu/archives/d7651.htm

If you have a site (online or physical) that you’ve visited to look at old advertisements, please share.