The Memory of Brands: When Vintage Advertising Becomes Contemporary Art
Discover Sergio Aranda's new 2026 art series inspired by iconic brands, vintage advertising signs, urban textures, and the beauty of time.
There are images that become part of our lives long before we learn to appreciate art.
We see them in shop windows, on city streets, in magazines, on packaging, and in the advertisements that accompany our everyday routines. Over the years, some disappear, others evolve, and a few become genuine cultural icons.
I'm talking about the world's most recognizable brands and their logos.
ColaCao, Coca-Cola, Chupa Chups, Levi's, Tiffany & Co., Kodak, Pepsi, Fanta, Nike, Rolex, and many more.
Each has its own history, typography, colors, and visual identity. Some logos are so deeply embedded in our collective memory that we recognize them instantly, even when only a small fragment remains visible.
But what interests me most is not the brand as a commercial product. It is everything that brand represents in our memories.
A familiar logo can transport us back to childhood, a particular journey, a different decade, or a place we thought we had forgotten.
And that extraordinary ability to awaken memories is precisely what inspired this new collection of original artworks.
From Vintage Advertising to Contemporary Art
<text color="secondary" italic>ColaCao — Memories of a Spanish Icon, 2026. Original mixed media painting on wooden panel, 80 × 60 × 4 cm.</text>
My intention is not to reproduce old advertisements faithfully.
Instead, I imagine how these colorful commercial signs might have evolved if they had remained exposed to sunlight, rain, pollution, and the passing decades.
I have always been fascinated by deteriorating surfaces, peeling paint, rusty metal, weathered walls, and faded lettering that disappears beneath layers of history.
In my paintings, these elements represent much more than decay. They represent memory.
Using acrylic paint, collage, image transfers, sculptural textures, and oxidation effects, I construct surfaces that seem to have lived another life before becoming artworks.
Some recall antique enamel advertising signs. Others evoke forgotten shop fronts, industrial walls, vintage billboards, or fragments of commercial graphics discovered during the restoration of an old building.
It is my way of bringing together two worlds that have always fascinated me: the precision of graphic design and the unpredictable beauty of aged materials.
ColaCao: A Spanish Advertising Icon Born in Barcelona
The ColaCao painting holds a particularly special meaning for me.
Created in Barcelona in 1945, ColaCao became one of Spain's most recognizable household brands, accompanying generations of families through their childhood and everyday lives.
Its visual identity and advertising campaigns are deeply connected to Spanish popular culture.
For this artwork, I chose an interpretation of its distinctive red lettering against a warm background of oranges, yellows, and earthy tones, inspired by traditional commercial signs.
I wanted to recreate the sensation of discovering an old advertising panel that had survived decades of exposure to the elements.
The colors appear weathered, the edges reveal traces of corrosion, and the richly textured surface transforms a familiar commercial image into something almost archaeological.
But I also wanted to introduce a reference to my own city.
At the bottom of the composition, I incorporated three sculptural interpretations of the Barcelona flower tile, known as the panot de flor.
These iconic pavement patterns, recreated with raised textures, dark metallic tones, and rust effects, establish a connection between ColaCao's Barcelona origins and the city's architectural identity.
For me, it is like bringing together two fragments of Barcelona's everyday history within a single artwork.
Coca-Cola and Pepsi: The Power of American Advertising Icons
Few brands have transformed their visual identities into universal cultural symbols as successfully as Coca-Cola and Pepsi.
Their colors, typography, and advertising campaigns have influenced generations across the world.
Coca-Cola's unmistakable red and white lettering and Pepsi's evolving blue and red identity offer fascinating artistic possibilities.
What interests me is the contrast between an instantly recognizable graphic design and a surface that appears damaged, fragmented, and aged.
A logo originally designed to look clean, bright, and commercially appealing can take on an entirely different personality when surrounded by corrosion, industrial textures, and layers of distressed paint.
The image remains familiar, but its meaning changes.
It is no longer simply advertising.
It becomes a visual memory of another time.
Chupa Chups: When Commercial Design Meets Fine Art
Chupa Chups is another particularly fascinating brand because of its direct connection to the art world.
Founded by Enric Bernat in Spain in 1958, its visual identity gained an extraordinary artistic dimension when Salvador Dalí redesigned its famous logo in 1969.
I find it fascinating that such a familiar commercial symbol can have such a strong connection to art history.
Its vibrant yellow, red lettering, and distinctive flower-shaped design possess an incredible visual energy.
In my interpretation, these cheerful graphic elements can coexist with weathered surfaces, sculptural textures, and fragments of collage.
The contrast between the joyful simplicity of the original branding and the appearance of an aged, almost forgotten object creates an entirely new visual experience.
Levi's, Tiffany & Co., and the Language of Iconic Brands
Not all brands evoke the same emotions.
Levi's represents American culture, denim, youth, rebellion, and freedom.
Tiffany & Co., on the other hand, evokes elegance, fine jewelry, refinement, and luxury.
Their visual identities are completely different, yet both are instantly recognizable.
With Levi's, I am drawn to the possibility of combining its strong graphic identity with industrial surfaces, expressive colors, and rough textures that recall the history of workwear and traditional materials.
Tiffany & Co. invites a different approach.
Its unmistakable blue offers the possibility of creating more minimalist compositions, where the refinement of color contrasts with the imperfections of an aged and distressed surface.
My previous career in fine jewelry and gemology also influences the way I approach these symbols.
For many years, I worked surrounded by precious objects, carefully selected materials, and highly precise visual codes.
Today, I enjoy creating a dialogue between that pursuit of perfection and the beauty of imperfection.
Kodak, Rolex, Nike, and Other Visual Memories
The collection also explores other brands that have shaped our visual culture.
Kodak evokes analog photography, family memories, and a time when each photograph carried a different emotional value.
Rolex represents precision, craftsmanship, and the passage of time — concepts that become especially interesting when combined with weathered and corroded surfaces.
Nike has developed such a powerful visual identity that a single symbol can communicate movement and energy without words.
I am also interested in brands such as Fanta, Texaco, Campbell's, and other historical references from the worlds of food, fashion, travel, and industry.
Each brand presents a different artistic challenge.
My objective is not to make every painting look the same, but to discover a composition, color palette, and treatment of materials that reflects the unique character of each icon.
Rust, Sculptural Textures, and the Wabi-Sabi Philosophy
Although these famous logos are the visual protagonists of the series, my artistic language remains deeply connected to the physical nature of materials.
Layers, cracks, weathered surfaces, distressed paint, and oxidation effects continue to play an essential role in my work.
I draw inspiration from the Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi, which celebrates simplicity, imperfection, and the beauty created by the passage of time.
A brand-new advertising sign can be visually perfect.
But an old sign, marked by decades of exposure, can tell a far more interesting story.
Its colors have changed, some letters have disappeared, and its edges reveal traces of different periods.
That transformation is what I try to capture in my paintings.
I am not interested in creating artificially perfect objects.
I want my surfaces to have depth, character, and a history of their own.
Barcelona as Part of My Artistic Language
Since moving to Barcelona, the city's architecture and streets have become a constant source of inspiration.
El Born, its historic façades, old workshops, metal shutters, weathered walls, and characteristic pavements are all part of my visual universe.
The Barcelona flower tile appears in several of my artworks as a kind of architectural signature.
I enjoy combining it with elements from other cities and cultures because it creates a connection between the local and the universal.
An American brand can coexist with textures inspired by a wall in Barcelona.
A Spanish advertising logo can appear on a surface reminiscent of an old industrial sign.
Each composition creates its own dialogue between places, eras, and memories.
Beyond Contemporary Art: A Collection for Vintage Advertising Enthusiasts
This new series also establishes a connection with the world of collecting.
Antique advertising posters, vintage enamel signs, commercial plaques, historical packaging, and promotional objects are all part of our shared visual heritage.
Many have become highly desirable pieces among collectors of vintage advertising, graphic design, historical branding, and commercial memorabilia.
My paintings do not attempt to replace these historical objects or present themselves as authentic antique signs.
They are original contemporary artworks, individually created on wooden panels and developed through layered mixed media techniques.
Each surface has its own marks, textures, colors, and distinctive variations.
I find it exciting that these paintings may appeal not only to contemporary art collectors but also to people passionate about vintage advertising, iconic brands, retro design, and industrial objects.
Sometimes, a familiar image can awaken emotions just as powerful as those inspired by an abstract painting.
Painting What Remains
We live surrounded by images that appear and disappear at extraordinary speed.
Advertising constantly changes. Brands redesign their logos, shops close, and cities transform their landscapes.
Yet certain images remain engraved in our memories.
This collection was born from that reflection.
What happens when a commercial image stops trying to sell us something and begins reminding us of something?
What remains of a logo when we separate it from its original advertising purpose?
For me, what remains is color, shape, history, and, above all, emotion.
That is the essence of this project.
Transforming iconic advertising imagery into fragments of memory, where graphic design, urban art, and the traces of time come together.
Because even the most ordinary objects and familiar images can become part of our personal history.
“I paint the memory of materials.”
Sergio Aranda
Contemporary Artist — Barcelona, 2026
This series consists of independent original artworks inspired by the visual history of iconic brands. The artworks are not official products and do not imply endorsement, sponsorship, licensing, or affiliation with the companies represented.