Streamline Moderne

Moderne sells the future as speed. Everything is drawn as if wind has already shaped it, so the poster promises that the thing advertised is faster and newer than what you have.

It is also the friendliest of the deco family. Rounded corners read as approachable where stepped verticals read as formal.

Draw the horizontal. Three parallel speed lines behind an object do more than any amount of detail on the object itself.

Round every corner and taper the shapes into a teardrop. The silhouette should look like it was made in a wind tunnel.

Palette is cool: chrome grey, pale sky blue, cream, one red accent. The type is a wide geometric sans, often leaning a few degrees forward, sometimes with its own speed lines trailing off the last letter.

Use it for transport, a motor show, a diner, a retro product launch, a sports day, anything about going somewhere.

Leave it alone for a still subject. Speed lines behind a cake stall read as a joke.

Art Deco steps upward and reaches for gold. Moderne slides sideways and reaches for chrome.

Mid-century modern graphic comes twenty years later and swaps the rendered chrome for flat cut shapes and texture. If nothing gleams, you are past Moderne.

Raymond Loewy applied it to everything from the Coldspot refrigerator in 1935 to the Pennsylvania Railroad S1 locomotive, and the Chrysler Airflow put it on the road in 1934. American diners and Greyhound stations kept the look alive long after the movement ended.

The model returns Art Deco because the two are neighbours. Say horizontal speed lines, rounded corners, no stepped forms and no gold.

The other failure is heavy photographic chrome. Ask for flat graphic chrome, two or three greys, rather than a rendered metal surface.