As you remember, I collect old Macs. I don’t know whether it’s me getting older or that Apple hasn’t released anything interesting lately, but I find old computers much more appealing than anything Apple is making now.

About a year ago, I got a whole “pile” of old PowerMac G4s for free, and, as is often the case with old computers, you can find something interesting on their disks (sometimes you come across things that make you want to format the hard drive as quickly as possible). Specifically, on one of the disk in this batch, I discovered a massive collection of vintage advertising posters from the first half of the 20th century.

Hundreds of high-quality files (some as large as 300–500 MB each) featuring advertisements for physical goods—chocolate, alcohol, milk, bicycles; experiences—ski resorts, cruises, exotic countries; and announcements of various events—circuses, competitions, etc. Who collected (or purchased?) them and why—it’s obviously unknown to me, just as is the copyright status of this content. Most of the posters are European, although they often advertise products from different parts of the world—Asia, Africa, South America.

I want to clarify upfront that not all the posters conform to modern standards of political correctness. Some may contain ethnic stereotypes, some may feature nudity, etc. But overall, it is an incredibly fascinating collection, and I decided to share it.

I don’t have the heart to keep this treasure hidden from others, so I came up with and implemented an interesting solution. I started by organizing the collection: sorting all the files, rotating those that were incorrectly oriented, finding and deleting all duplicates, and then uploading everything to a blog. Then, with the help of the internet and ChatGPT, I wrote a WordPress plugin that will take one randomly selected illustration each day and publish it as a blog post. What won’t work in the process—I’ll only find out later. You might have already noticed the first test post here. I also hope this won’t happen:

As you can see from the screenshot at the beginning of the post, I still have 545 illustrations left, so that’s enough for the next year and a half. Posts will be published on social networks that support WordPress integration (in the case of Facebook, it only allows automatic posting to a page, not to a personal profile). Among all modern social media platforms, I personally prefer Bluesky, and I don’t visit the nazi bar of Xitter—and I don’t recommend you do either.

In short — a new vintage poster every day!