NASA is giving away its vintage-inspired travel posters for free

Mars1
Mars1

When NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory reached out to Don and Ryan Clark — the design duo behind Invisible Creature — in hopes that they might create custom art for the organization, the pair jumped at the opportunity.

Over the course of three months, they designed a trio of vintage-inspired travel posters for NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Visions of the Future project, a series of pieces now available for free download online.

See also: SpaceX's retro Mars posters depict the red planet as a travel destination

mars
mars

Image: NASA JPL, invisible creature

Each poster is representative of a specific historic space mission— Invisible Creature was tasked with creating art for the Voyager's Grand Tour, the discovery of Enceladus and NASA's Mars exploration program. Though NASA provided notes, Don Clark tells Mashable that the pair were relatively free to design whatever they envisioned.

"My goal with these was that people would want to hang them up and that they were beautiful and that they lived up to the standard that is NASA," Clark said. "We were inspired by vintage travel posters, WPA-type posters from the 1930s and then all the way up to mid-century modern— 1940s, 1950s, 1960s."

"We want that vintage look but we want it to feel contemporary as well," he added.

Clark says the chance to design for NASA hit home for he and Ryan, as their grandfather Al Paulsen worked as an illustrator and designer at the organization's Ames Research Center for more than 30 years.

"The project was a no brainer and was really a special one for us," he said.

grand_tour
grand_tour

Image: nasa jpl, invisible creature

enceladus
enceladus

Image: nasa jpl, invisible creature http://blog.invisiblecreature.com/new-posters-for-nasa/