09/26/2026
A very special gift landed at the studio recently: a collection of vintage matchbooks from the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s.
And yes, we absolutely stopped working for a little recess.
Because look at these. The typography. The colors. The illustrations. The tiny logos. The names. The places. Every one is its own little piece of design history.
Many are from California, especially the Los Angeles area, with a handful from other corners of the country. And of course, we’ve been looking up every restaurant, hotel, bar and club to see what’s still around, what’s long gone, and what stories we can find. *Moonshadows was one of our old stomping grounds when we lived in LA and we were so sad to hear that, tragically, it was lost in the Palisades Fire on January 8th, 2024 💔
We find inspiration in all kinds of unexpected places, and these have already sparked plenty of ideas around the studio. New color combinations, type treatments, little graphic details we want to remember. It’s pretty fun to look at something made 50 or 60 years ago and find ideas that still feel fresh.
These were headed for the trash, and now they’re giving us a very welcome excuse to play, research and get wonderfully distracted.
So many stories are wrapped up in these tiny matchbooks. We’re having a ridiculous amount of fun with them.
Do you recognize any of these? Have you been to any of these places? Tell us what you remember. We want the stories.
