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Need Some Throwback Inspiration?

The Cari Institute or The Consumer Aesthetics Research Institute is a great place to track down some throwback inspiration for your next project.

CARI, or Consumer Aesthetics Research Institute, is an online community dedicated to developing a visual lexicon of consumer ephemera from the 1970s until now.

We hope that you will participate with us in researching and developing this new medium of cataloging design history.

— CARI web site

This is such a treasure trove of stylistic inspiration! Each category comes with a description, time period, gallery and links to related styles.

This online community is a wikipedia of visual and artistic styles ranging from Cassette Futurism to Hexatron and beyond. You can search by time period or keyword. The site also tries to find the “first known example” of each style which is a really interesting from a research perspective.

Sure, it is easy enough to search Pinterest or Google for “retro” or “disco” as a style but CARI really digs in and defines the sub categories makes it so much easier to find and land on a style for your next project.

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