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Art Deco Design: History and Inspiring Examples
Art deco is one of those design styles that defies the passage of time. One of the first, major international styles of design, Art Deco appeared in France just before the outbreak of World War I and saw its demise as World War II began to sweep across Europe a couple of decades later. In spite of its short-lived nature, monuments to its greatness remain in manmade creations all over the world. That’s the beauty of Art Deco: this design style covered virtually everything that could be legitimately touched by design, including graphic design (Art Deco fonts), interiors, buildings, cars, jewelry, pop culture, and even mundane objects like your radio and other household appliances. It’s quite rare when a design trend has such a broad-based reach on much of what you encounter in the world. Even today, this style is alive and well in graphic design and numerous pop culture references and homages to its heyday. Take a trip down memory lane with the glorious designs of the 1920s and 30s with this primer on everything Art Deco.
The History of Art Deco
To understand this design’s roots, we have to go back to France in the late 19th century. Around this time, France was a hotbed of burgeoning design-trend activity, with Art Nouveau also popping up in this exciting era of great creativity. Essentially, we have the then-growing influence of so-called decorative artists to thank for what would eventually and officially turn into Art Deco. Decorative artists were those who worked as designers of textiles, furniture, and other ornamentation; until 1875, they were just regarded as ordinary artisans. However, that year, they gained status when they were awarded recognized status with the distinction of “arts decoratifs.” When France’s Society of Decorative Arts was established in 1901, these former artisans were now given equal authorship rights that had previously only been enjoyed by sculptors and painters. Meanwhile, in Italy, something similar was happening, with the first-ever expo devoted to the decorative arts being held in Turin in 1902.

Throughout the 20th century’s first decade, more inroads were made by this nascent design style. New magazines devoted to this style were springing up all over Paris while art exhibits in the city started to feature more decorative arts sections. Part of the reason for Art Deco’s growth was French nationalism: French designers were increasingly unhappy with the increasingly prosperous exports of more cost-affordable German furniture, so they decided to develop their own style to compete. Not to be outdone, Art Deco Wallpaper , department stores, and clothing designers joined in the fray. French brands you’re no doubt familiar with today—like Louis Vuitton and Cartier—started to design their products in a more modern fashion, recruiting various decorative artists to work on projects in their design studios. By this time, luxurious and wealthy materials like silk, ivory, and ebony—along with very vibrant, stylized and colorful motifs—started to mold the trademark Art Deco style. By the 1910s, Art Deco was leaving its mark on buildings in France, too. Art Deco Wallpaper completed in this memorable style was Auguste Perret’s Theatre des Champs-Elysees. You can look at this theater as the classic epitome of what makes Art Deco…Art Deco, both inside and out. Outside, it features Art-Deco hallmarks like:
Straight lines
Geometric patterns and shapes
Clean, rectangular design
Inside, it featured Art Deco:
Sculptures
Curtains
Paintings
Dome
Now, this design technique was in full swing, especially in Paris. Furniture coming out of Paris was characterized by loud and sometimes discordant colors, with floral patterns being a favorite. Richer materials like silk and ebony would be fused with vibrant and bright colors for an unmistakable look.

What was also really interesting was the influence of Cubism, which left a mark in France by 1912, on Art Deco. Cubism, of course, is the art style where the single viewpoint of an object is replaced with a fragmented subject that’s shown from several points of view, together with an emphasis on minimalist forms. In particular, it was 1912’s The Cubist House, an architectural display at the annual Paris art and design exhibition called Autumn Salon, that demonstrated not only the overlap between Cubism and Art Deco (note the strikingly geometric shapes and straight lines common to both), but also provided something of a basis to the inevitable explosion in popularity of Art Deco. Interestingly, it was the famous Swiss-French designer and architect Charles-Edouard Jeanneret (AKA, Le Corbusier) who saw the Cubist House and later on, in 1925, designed the Esprit Nouveau pavilion for the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts, further showing the connection between the two design styles. It was at this 1925 exhibition that Art Deco also got its name. By 1925, the curious design idiosyncrasy within Art Deco was its obsession with everything machine-related, such as planes, cars, and ocean liners, owing to the ability of this movement to adapt to what was happening around it, as technology was undergoing a rapid evolution in the 1920s and 30s. This design pivot in the movement, which was earlier based mainly on furniture, textile, clothing, and architecture, was key in solidifying its permanent association with science, technology and, therefore, progress. That’s why we also think of Art Deco as a modern approach to design. This continued to the point that, by 1939, there were examples of this style all over the world, particularly in bigger cities and with architecture.
The Characteristics of Art Deco
What makes Art Deco capture the imagination with such ease is its broadness. It’s essentially not just a single style, but a mosaic of various and even contradictory styles joining forces to create something that was then very new and exciting. Its major characteristics include:
Heavy geometric influences
Triangular shapes
Zigzags
Trapezoidal shapes
Straight and smooth lines
Loud, vibrant, and even kitschy colors
Streamlined and sleek forms
Sunburst or sunrise motifs
Exaggerated curves
Hard edges
Low reliefs
Stepped forms
Chevron (inverted, V-shaped mark) arrangements
Ziggurat patterns
Stylized, floral patterns
Compared to other schools of design, Art Deco’s characteristics make for a long bullet list! Art Deco Wallpaper that this style incorporates so many other influences is a big reason for this. Take a look at some selections from our large collection of Art Deco graphic-design assets, and see if you can spot these beautiful design elements:

For starters, it was the immediate successor of Art Nouveau, which was a very popular, but short-lived, design style that became widespread in the late 19th century and was out of fashion already by 1910. Since Art Deco Wallpaper was using the natural world in its designs—nature elements, the curvy lines of flowers, and women—Art Deco was pushback against this. That’s why Art Deco is flashier, louder, and uses more machine- and technology-based motifs in its designs. Another feature that makes Art Deco stand out is its preoccupation with archaeology—which is represented in the forms and lines that pervade its designs. In the early 20th century, groundbreaking work was being done in archaeology, with excavations in Pompeii, Troy and, the biggest of all, the discovery of King Tut’s tomb in 1922. Art Deco designers noticed this and infused their designs with shapes that are distinctly archaeological in nature, like:
Arches
Ziggurats
Buttresses
Columns
Simultaneously, Art Deco was obsessed with everything Machine Age-related, particularly from approximately 1925 onwards. The Machine Age refers to the era from 1880 to 1945, where technology was advancing at such a rapid pace, punctuated by both the later stages of the Second Industrial Revolution and the start of the Atomic Age. Because of all the exciting progress in machine-related activity at the time—electric motors, skyscrapers, radio technology, the growing popularity of long-distance and safe travel in cars, planes, trains—designers took notice. Art Deco Wallpaper embraced this machine element to such an extent that, by the 1930s, a subset of the design called Streamline Moderne was actually developed. That’s why Art Deco is one of those rare design styles that features elements and inspiration that seem oddly out of place. You’ll find nods to archaeology like arches and ziggurats in the same design that incorporates machine-related elements like streamlined forms and aerodynamic curves. Art Deco Wallpaper is an approach to design that truly stands out and earns admiration and emulation still today, more than 100 years after its birth.
Art Deco in Graphic Design
Graphic design was one of the earliest areas where Art Deco left its mark, starting well before World War I. It was in the Paris costume designs and posters for the Ballets Russes and fashion catalogs of Paul Poiret where a French audience first gazed on Art Deco-influenced graphic design. From there, Art Deco Wallpaper spread like wildfire. By the 1920s, its influence in graphic design has reached American shores, with world-famous fashion magazines like Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and Vanity Fair all featuring covers that feted this new, daring, and modern look.

Even posters rapidly changed thanks to this new style. Whereas Art Nouveau posters had usually featured cabarets and theatrical actresses and productions, they now changed to more reflect the machine-influenced obsession of the day, specifically on travel posters. These increasingly featured airlines and steamship lines, illustrated with linear, dynamic, and more minimalistic forms, typically against a solid-colored background. However, posters for entertainers were still popular. In the 1930s, Art Deco designers who worked on posters for famous entertainers of the time, such as Josephine Baker and Charlie Chaplin, shot to prominence themselves. Art Deco Wallpaper developed a following after designing posters for Baker while Jean Carlu handled posters for Chaplin’s films. He immigrated to the U.S. right before World War II; while in the States, he helped the American war effort by designing propaganda posters to encourage war production in the U.S.


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