Another interesting difference is in advertising. Advertising is in every way a reflection of society, but it is also a reflection of ourselves, and this observation becomes quite startling when looking at how advertisements and advertising styles (and messages) have changed from the 1930's, 40's and 50's. 

A good example is in looking at slimming products. Early ads for Kruschen Salts clearly show women as being subservient to the needs of their husbands. How can it be otherwise with a headline like "SO FAT HER HUSBAND WAS ASHAMED - The agony of trying to dress well". An interesting and what we would today view as a totally patronising approach was a 1949 recruitment advert for the Bank of NSW which discusses interesting female occupations: "The Typist - while typing is their principle duty, Wales typists usually have other duties such as filing and indexing"... sounds like a fun job.

On the other hand, some messages seemingly remain on-song for ever. A 1935 advertisement for Colgate reminds readers that "Her roommate hinted... most bad breath begins with the teeth".

And just to scare the pants off every reader, a wonderful little miracle mediciine called Harrisons Pills promised to lift the strain off your kidneys: "Uric Acid crystals like spintered glass tear nerves and muscles - kidney breakdown brings general ill health. Cleanse your system of the trouble causing crystals; heal your raw weakened kidneys by talking Harrisaon's Pills". 

Whew! I had beter find me some. 

These advertisements and more are available in this website.

South Melbourne became a working class suburb, filled with small terrace houses built in the Victorian era, between 1860 and the turn of the 20th century. By the 1980's a process of gentrification had begun, spurred on by a rapid infiltration of business (including the advertising industry) into the area. Property values shot up dramatically as people once again discovered the delights of living within walking distance of their office, with the added benefits of the CBD and the beaches being just a short bike or tram ride away. Of course, this process of gentrification meant that a huge proportion of the old Victorian housing stock was ripe for renovation and upgrading.

At the time, our business was located in South Melbourne. One morning as I walked along a street near our  office, I approached a row of terraces that was in the process of being gutted in preparation for the inevitable renovation. As it was starting to rain and I was without an umbrella, I was hurrying along, when suddenly my eye was caught by a pile of newspapers standing in the gutter along with piles of building debris, musty old carpet and general rubbish. They had clearly just been deposited there by the workmen inside, and all waiting to be thrown into the skip standing in the road. Maybe it was the yellow colour but something caught my eye and I stopped to look. I realised that here was a treasure trove of newspapers from the early 1930's. From the look of the old carpet beside them, it was obvious that the newspapers had been lining the floorboards under the carpet for all these years. The top copies had already been ruined by the rain, so I scooped up the rest and carried them back to the office.

And they were fragile. On cleaning them up and dusting them off, I realised I had several entire copies of Melbourne's daily newspapers from 1935 and 1936. They are a wonderful record of life in Australia (as well as in Europe and the US) at the time. The job of scanning and cleaning the content up to make it suitable for reproduction is the subject of another story. 

Thus I have always been a bit of a bower-bird. I have been collecting stuff, looking after it and and restoring things all my life. My wife is a bit the same, and so it seemed perfectly natural that over the years our parents and grandparents ensured that we became the recipients of a massive amount of family treasure. I suppose it is because older generations knew that we would love and care for their treasures, some of which were passed on to them for safekeeping.

As a result, we have access have a huge store of photographs, books, antiques, emphemera and other stuff that we can turn into design elements to help you with your scrapbooking and genealogy projects. You will see many of these things in my designs, including very old parchments, recipe books, newspapers, postcards and other mementoes. Some things have just appeared... when we renovated our 100 year old home, we found bottle tops, cigarette cards, playing cards, newspapers and coins under the lino, behind Victorian fireplaces and behind skirting boards.

I take great pleasure in developing themes and finding new ways to create designs that evoke and era and help you to 'set the scene' for projects that you might be working on. I always appreciate it when you ask me if it is possible to create a specific theme, and many of my designs have come about this way. So if you have a need for a specific theme, contact me - you never know, I might just have the makings to generate a background specifically for you.

This website is full of interesting stuff. Start by looking here.

My brother was posted to Vietnam in 1969 with the Cavalry Division. He was originally in the 1st Armoured Corps, but was transferred into this highly mobile unit. Using the photos he sent through to me at the time, and comments made from his letters home and other photos and memorabilia (including a lot of stuff donated by his veteran mates, I was very pleased to generate a range of background papers for a special album I made for him. I am delighted that I can now make these designs available to you. I hope you get some great ideas from the Gallery.

Bluey Coleman now designs and manufactures beautiful regimental jewellery. Check out his website - http://www.lighthorsejewellery.com.au

There are just a few important things to know in order for me to create your own page or background design.

1. In creating a custom design for you, I will charge a simple one-off fee (to be negotiated depending on complexity). For this fee I will provide you with a set of printable .pdf and high resolution .jpg images, which you are then free to use as you desire.

2. The intellectual property rights to the image must be owned by you. In other words, it/they must be either image/s of your own making, or you must have authorisation to use it/them. If any photographs contain recognisable images of people, it is vital that you have their written release to authorise you to use them.

3. You in turn, will need to sign a Release Form authorising me to use the image/s. An acknowledgement of your ownership will be placed on the design (eg. "Images used with kind permission of G. W. Smith").

4. In exchange for my very low creative price, I will ask you to provide me with permission to continue to use the design by posting it on this website in an appropriate category, and possibly at my discretion, to make further use of your image/s in subsequent designs. If this is the case you will receive copies (via this website, email or disk) of any subsequent new artwork at no cost.

Please email me at info@honeyman.com.au for further details. See a custom designed background here.

We who share the passion for digital books, scrapbooking and genealogy are a relatively small group in the overall scheme of things. Out of a compulsive need to be creative, and united by a love of design, family exploration and discovery, we constantly seek out different and exciting new means of expression. That is where this website comes in. I have been creating artwork and background designs for photo-books, e-books, scrapbooking and genealogy for many, many years. For a long time I have felt that the 'industry' was very generic. That's not the industry's fault. Because most of the stuff that people use has traditionally been paper-based, the artists and creators have always had to develop more generalised designs with broad appeal in order to print enough volume to be able to sell the products at a realistic price. I understand this because for a long time I had contracts with some of these companies to produce designs for printing on paper. I also operated a specialist paper retail outlet, which gave me the opportunity to meet and liaise directly with customers, album designers, scrapbookers and genealogists.

Hence this website. Instead of investing vast sums of money in a small range of designs, I am able to generate a huge and ongoing range of designs for you to download at minimal cost. 

Our prices are low, so we ask you to be fair with us

This website is our only business. You will find our prices are fixed and fair (and if you buy a pack of designs the price per unit drops considerably). Because our prices are so low, we ask that you be fair and honourable and not distribute the designs to other people. Instead, tell them about our website or send them a link to this site so they can explore and download for themselves.

Meaningful, targeted designs

The numerous folk I met over this time were crying out for more meaningful, targeted designs, as well as for (because I am Australian) local Australian and New Zealand designs to add visual impact and meaning. So I set to work one day and I haven't stopped since. Many of the designs you find on this site have been developed due to specific request. For example, my  brother is a Vietnam veteran, and he features in several of the designs honouring the heroic efforts he and his mates made in that terrible experience. He is using some of my designs in his own Veterans jewellery manufacturing business.

On this site you will find a wildly diverse and eclectic range of categories. For special occasions, I can also be persuaded to create customised background designs or page set-ups for you at a very reasonable cost. So if you have a great photograph or some other images, and you can give me a good idea of what you want, I am very happy to discuss this with you.