In the past I’ve written about using the Library of Congress vintage travel posters collection in Google Earth. Last week I read a new Library of Congress blog post the vintage travel posters collection. Reading that post inspired me try my hand at creating a “vintage” travel poster of my own. Drawing is not a talent that I have developed in my life so I turned to my favorite graphic design tool, Canva, for help. 

In Canva there are lots of templates for making posters for all kinds of purposes. There is also a massive library of drawings and clipart that you can use in those templates. I chose not to use a template and instead chose one of the drawings that I found to be the background image for my poster. I then inserted a drawing of woman wearing a backpack and looking through binoculars. Finally, I used one of the text templates to add “Explore America” to my poster. You can see my finished product below. 

Applications for Education
Creating travel posters could be a nice way to have students summarize what they’ve learned about a national park, a city, or another travel destination. I’m not an art or graphic design teacher, but I can see a project like this one being used to help students develop skills in those areas as well.