The Danish Poster Tradition and Family Legacy

I didn’t grow up thinking about poster art. But it was there — the kind of design that sits in the background until you start noticing space, shape, and restraint.

(My great-granduncle, Aage Rasmussen, created travel posters for DSB in the mid-20th century — graphic, minimal compositions with a kind of stillness held inside the suggestion of movement. One of his posters can be seen here.)

A quiet platform — drawn from memory, shaped by a family tradition of Danish poster design.

I didn’t know much about his work as a child, but I remember how those images felt. Clean lines. Cool blues. A train just about to leave. That same visual restraint still lingers in many Danish art prints today — including, perhaps, in my own.

Rooted in Danish Poster Art and Quiet Design

My maternal grandmother studied illustration, too. She was in school with Ib Andersen — a friend of hers then — and although she never formally taught me anything about drawing, I think something settled in. Not in technique, but in tone. The way she arranged things, the way she carried a sense of order and observation — it all left a mark. I didn’t learn illustration through formal study. It’s been self-taught, mostly through instinct and repetition. But I’ve always drawn in a certain way, and over time, I’ve started to recognize where that way might come from. There’s a particular Danish visual rhythm I seem to have absorbed without planning to. Space around the figure. A slightly faded palette. A kind of everyday atmosphere that doesn’t push too hard. I never set out to reference the poster tradition consciously, and I’m not trying to revive it. But there’s a long thread of Danish poster art — from the early travel designs of Aage Rasmussen to the quiet tones that still influence illustrators today — and I can feel where it shows up in my work. Not in exact lines, but in the sensibility underneath.

Sometimes I draw scenes with movement — people walking across a platform, someone carrying a bag toward a train. There’s quiet in those moments, even with motion. I realize now that it’s the same quiet I must have picked up through all those old images in the background. That sense that time is passing, but slowly.

A summer path outside Copenhagen. Places like this live quietly in the background of my drawings.

There’s a forest path I walk often, just outside the city. In summer, it smells like pine and warm dust, and everything moves a little slower. Or a day by the sea in Copenhagen — the wind lifting papers from a café table, gulls overhead, someone folding their jacket as the sun shifts. Those are the kinds of moments I try to draw. Not because they’re dramatic, but because they’re familiar in a way that lasts. I don’t think I’m carrying on a tradition. But I might be drawing within it — quietly, in my own way.

I didn’t train formally as an illustrator. But I’ve spent years sketching, refining, and following this tone — something grounded, quiet, and slightly off to the side. If you’d like to see more illustrations in this style — from everyday scenes to vintage-inspired pieces — you can browse my art portfolio or explore the Studio Notes blog for more reflections on creative process, Danish art prints, and visual storytelling.