via itwonlast, an article about the art of the airline safety card. Every time I fly, I want to snag it and build a collection. I only think I’ve done it once or twice, hopefully on the stranger trips (prop plane across Hungary maybe?). Where did Avi Steinberg find these?
By AVI STEINBERG
…
But even in these cards there are some moments of genuine pathos. Like the best of the contemporary cards, which have almost entirely done away with text, the effect was achieved through a drawing. A late sixties Gulf Air card portrays a well-tailored Marvel Comics–style man, stalwart and square jawed, prepared to meet his fate with a ducklike dignity.
But there is something to this art form beyond the drawings or texts. The last page of many safety cards is blank, which would be unremarkable had they not also included this caption: This Panel Intentionally Left Blank. Thus ends the artifice. Here, on this page, there are no melancholic passengers or dreamboat captains, no stern warnings, only a blank screen upon which you and I may project … what, exactly? What are we to make of this combination of blankness and intent? Seasick and weary, Melville’s Ishmael knew all about it. Whiteness, he said, “strikes more of panic to the soul than the redness which affrights in blood.”
