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The Museum of Airplane Safety Cards
The best airline-safety-card artists know how to amplify these details without creating too much noise. They are, after all, artists. They work within and bend the conventions of their form by playing with allusions to earlier work. Take, for example, a current US Airways safety card that portrays the conventional water flotation scene. We see a beautiful woman, with lush red hair, floating effortlessly, gazing ahead in an attitude of easeful melancholy.
As Avi Steinberg's plane crashed down, he thought, well isn't that "Dante Rossetti’s 1877 Mary Magdalene, with perhaps an ironic nod to Botticelli’s Venus, as the heroine of our worst-case scenario"? Something to think about this holiday travel season.
[Thanks, Nicole!]
I have always noticed that particular drawing! Because of it, I always read the safety card and enjoy the artwork.
That is clearly Scarlett Johansson.
The Magritte no-face apple guy one is the bessst.
"If shit goes down, if that horrifying alarm is sounded, will your fellow passengers really calmly place oxygen masks over their faces?"
I think this EVERY SINGLE TIME!
A long long time ago I knew this Australian guy who later started making gorgeus airplane safety card art: Xero Corp / Art Melbourne
This is the truest and the best thing.
One legitimately helpful thing that they don't tell you to do in the safety cards is to count the number of seats between you and the emergency exits closest to you, so that if you can't see for some reason you could possibly feel your way to them. My problem, though, is that the rows of seats are offset and I'm worried I would put my hand on the wrong one opposite me and thereby miscount.
@Ellie Sooooo glad to see I am not the only one who does this!
…is it just me or is there an Alanis Morrisette reference in this post?
This reminds me of that website that put funny captions under instructional pictures. I wonder if it's still out there?
It also reminds me that some people have awesome jobs and I wonder how you get them. Then I'm reminded that I know someone studying to become a medical illustrator, and he has to take one bajillion classes in sciencey stuff to get there.