If you’re a regular here on the blog, you’ll know we pretty much devour anything design related - hell, we’re damn near insatiable, but then that’s why you love us, right? Right! So, today we bring you a little something quirky, from way back. It’s a style of design you don’t see much of anymore - though to be fair, you can stumble across very cool updated versions of this kinda thing on Etsy, Designspiration and the odd typography Tumblr or Pinterest page. So, what have we got? Behold the beautiful vintage poison label design that once graced bottles from the 19th Century (and more recently)!     Now, for lovers of type out there, this is a feast of fonts and for graphic designers, there’s more than enough variety in the composition and layout of these gems to keep them falling in love over & over again. Hipsters - beware! This post is literally littered with serif fonts. You may want to take some anti-nausea meds round about now, if you’re hectically opposed to that kind of thing.     Jokes aside, what makes these vintage poison labels so great is their combination of illustration and type. For some, the emphasis is more on simply getting the deathly message across. For others, there’s a touch more artistic inclination. The designers of these labels are now lost to time, but one thing holds true - they provide a great sense of the kind of hand-lettered typography, and a good feel of the print processes, used in their day.     For the most part, these labels would have been printed using lithography, which at that point in time was among some really cutting-edge tech. Engraved or etched plates provide the great texture you can see in the cross-hatching, and occasional use of typesetting provides the slight quirks of some of the letters. Then again - beyond the lettering and layout, or print processes - there are all these damn fine skulls!     Some of these skulls - such as the example below - are a little rudimentary, sure, but then then these weren’t necessarily the creations of gifted artists, but rather simply had to communicate the idea of fatal consequence. And for that matter, in the day & age when these labels were standard, there was a whole lot of creative license going on, meaning that any image was fair game for copying and reuse. (By the way, if you’re a lover of skulls, you should get over to this post right here)   One way or another, all of the many skills that came together to create these labels add up to a much-forgotten but entirely beautiful design sub-genre, that we’re happy to revisit here, in the interest of bringing you, our dear reader, 100% pure design joy. Enjoy these? Don’t be shy - let us know what else you’d like to see featured here: drop a mail to travis (at) springleap.com, thanks!