Nostalgia Loop

Nostalgia Loop is a newspaper containing two essays about the role of nostalgia in American and global politics. Pulling from the visual language of vintage kids food graphics, the design of the broadsheet seeks to establish a sense of comfort and outmoded longing for a past so familiar in television commercials. However, as the reader progresses, the orderly two-column layout is interrupted by an enclosed poster that asks, “how complacent are we willing to be, steeped in this nostalgia?”.

With a front cover inspired by the densely packed layout of celebrity tabloids and body copy set in Freight Text, the newspaper strives to evoke my personal ambivalence towards this tendency to romanticize the past. The use of Neue Kabel, a geometric sans serif, loosely references Futura to situate the newspaper within a historical conversation about typography’s role in global politics and national identity. Subheadings appear in the austere and narrow Corporate A (URW), contrasting with text in Linotype’s Trade Gothic Next that call out major themes and relevant quotes throughout the newspaper.