Austin Omnivan 1956

This vehicle design borrowed from European competitors (especially VW) for its shape and proportions and with revisions would remain in production for another 11 years. Smoother contours and an undivided windscreen distinguished it visually from its predecessors. The publicity brochure shown here relied upon the skill of the illustrator for its cheery visualisation of a gently idealised post-war world, rendered in a style we might call Ladybird-lite. The professional illustrator would soon be supplanted by the photographer as printing techniques improved but in the late 1950s the hand-drawn image conveyed a sense of immediacy and visual power that could not be easily matched in cheaper photographic reproduction.