Snow on the Road

A North American winter is not to be taken lightly – weather bombs and snowmageddon are routine events. Especially in the North East and Midwest where massive snowfalls are reported every year with breathless excitement. Digging the driveway out of waist high snow was a common task, often shared with the family as shown here. These ads from 1930 to 1965 show Madison Avenue promoting the virtues of winter-proofed cars to an audience that needed no reminder of the perils of driving in snow and ice. Sporty associations were most favoured with the majority of cars pictured against a backdrop of winter sports – a ski resort is just about the last place where the affluent will be reminded of the existence of the lower orders. The merits of such refinements as triple-turbine transmission, a Super Jetfire Engine, a Vibra-Tuned Ride and swivel hipped handling are extolled in the text. For the reader with a strong stomach the final ad (Goodbye Mr Winter) is an egregious example of the art of the copywriter at its most long winded.

Mid-century American Illustration – a selection of double pages

To start 2018 we present some double page spreads from US magazines, mostly Saturday Evening Post with a few from Ladies Home Journal. In some we see the illustrator doing no more than take advantage of a broader space to add impact but in the best the illustrator has found fresh and innovative ways to integrate image and text to dynamic effect. The very best are those where the artist has exploited facial close-ups, dramatic lighting and tonal modelling to spring the image off the page and into our eyes – Jon Whitcomb and Alex Ross being masters of this technique. Artists include George Hughes, Melbourne Brindle, Robert Patterson, Halleck Finley, Peter Stevens and Walter Baumhofer. Baumhofer’s contribution (This time it’s Goodbye) artfully frames the text extract while maintaining a powerful spatial tension between the foreground figure and the distant couple she observes from behind the curtain.

Child Soldiers of Madison Avenue

Today we expose another cross-section through the geological record of mid-century American advertising and consider the impact of child centred publicity. Few images are as potent in emotional appeal as that of the child and for advertisers it is one of the basic elements in the visual vocabulary. A well-chosen image can help to convince the public that they are buying from an essentially honest and benevolent business when these qualities are reflected in the eyes of an innocent and guileless child. If the product contributes directly to the welfare of children (medicinal, infant foodstuffs, hygiene) the image must be modified to maximise parental anxieties and engage with protective instincts. When the product is primarily designed to meet the desires of children (breakfast cereal, confectionery) the chosen image will show the child transformed in terms of energy, alertness, health and contentment. A fortunate few graduate to the status of brand characters and enjoy long lives in a state of arrested development. Gender stereotyping is everywhere – boys are adventurous and naughty while girls are sensitive and helpful. The unimaginative advertiser is most likely to resort to cuteness of countenance to overcome consumer resistance – what monster could deny happiness and security to such an adorable and ingratiating child? Most of the following examples fit into one or other of these basic categories but a minority defy any classification and seem to have been conceived in a perfect storm of conflicting ideas. These are the ones that give the greatest pleasure to the detached observer of human folly.