Hundreds of thousands of sweaty, athleisure-clad national park visitors have entered the park gift shop after a hike and immediately gravitated toward one particular display: the vintage-looking magnets, postcards and posters with the park’s name in blocky lettering, its best-known vista or features rendered in simple contours and pastels.
The style, which has become shorthand for old-school travel posters, can be traced back to one series of 14 posters, created for 13 parks and monuments in the 1930s and ’40s by Works Progress Administration artists. But those original designs were almost completely lost to time and neglect.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/25/style/ranger-doug-leen-wpa-national-park-posters.html
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