Old Florida
Celebrating the Sunshine State
When I started my blog it was called “Visual Ephemera, Musings from the State I’m In” with the dual meaning of recording both my internal state and observations based on my travels around Florida. Shortly after launching, I noticed there was no Facebook presence to document what I was writing about, namely Old Florida. So I started a Facebook page to commemorate and preserve the culture, history and environment of Old Florida, which I defined as the age before interstates and corporate theme parks. The page was designed to celebrate the beautiful wilderness, small towns of the beaten path, and overall uniqueness of the Sunshine State. It started out modestly until a post about Clearwater’s beloved Kapok Tree Restaurant went viral, and it exploded with followers overnight.
The built-in audience of this page has proven to be a great resource for crowd-sourcing. An example is a survey of what Old Florida smells like. “Coppertone. Noxzema after the Coppertone didn't work. Night blooming jasmine or natal plum citrus blossoms in the spring. Salt air at the beach. The earthy, swampy smell of slow-moving rivers. Maxwell House coffee from the freeway in Jacksonville and roasting Bustelo coffee in Hialeah. Hot asphalt as it rains and fresh cut grass…”
Facebook crowdsourcing helped to create verbiage that was then crafted by copywriter Jane Harrison into an Old Florida poster and postcard. The posters were sold through the Facebook page, at a local bookstore, and at the Matheson History Museum in Gainesville.
I endeavor to keep the page free of politics, creating a space where people of different views can come together to share their love of the state. One of the sentiments often expressed in comments is disappointment in how much Florida has changed. My goal with the page is to point out places where Old Florida still exists with the hope that with more awareness these places might be preserved. But in a state that changes as quickly as Florida does, saving a bit of the past can be a challenge.
Much of my design work has an Old Florida feeling to it. It’s work I like doing and preserving the unique parts of our state is very important to me.
I was invited to show my Old Florida-influenced design work at a friend’s gallery by Rum Island on the Santa Fe River near High Springs, Florida. I’ve used this graphic from a 1950s map of Florida before, but I altered it to add more Old Florida elements.
In the days before stock photography websites full of easy-to-access imagery, I undertook the challenge of creating a collage of elements that exemplified Old Florida. So I spent lots of time in the Orlando Public Library looking at archival illustrations from the nineteenth century. I’m happy enough with the results to display it years later and becoming familiarity with the library’s Florida collection on the fourth floor proved useful.
I was pleased by the response to this poster on social media and in a few brick and mortar establishments with good taste. I also used the artwork on notecards, postcards, and business cards. What do you consider to be elements of “Old Florida”?
When I found out the Enterprise Museum was taking out an ad in the local newspaper for my upcoming speaking event, I asked them to let me design the ad. The museum’s public programs are called the “Steamboat Salon Series” reflecting the importance of steamboat traffic in the development of Enterprise. My talk was packed, so the ad must have worked!
This is another old favorite from my stint as Creative Director at Church Street Station, an attraction in downtown Orlando where we endeavored to make everything look like it was created in the Victorian era. The Blues Attic was a short-lived promotion on the second floor of the Phineas Phogg’s disco. They sold t-shirts emblazoned with logo long after the Blues Attic ceased to exist.
Old Florida still exists in out-of-the-way pockets around the state. Every year, we lose more of it as development crushes what is unique about the Sunshine State and replaces it with bland, characterless monotony. Take the backroads whenever you can.
Listen to the Florida Spectacular podcast.
Take a weekly trip across Florida with authors Cathy Salustri and Rick Kilby and discover a side of Florida you never knew existed. From the scallops in Panhandle bays to the Hemingway cats in Key West, every week is a Florida adventure.