Working with ColorTobacco Railroads Catalogs Better graphics Weekly magazines 1890 Artistic freedom |
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Catalog Sales Manufacturers often print catalogs of their merchandise, which they mail to interested customers living some distance away. Montgomery Ward, based in Chicago, is an early big-city department store, and the first to offer a comprehensive catalog of ordinary household goods, including clothing. Its mail-order business is a big operation. | |||||||||
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Cleaner Design As illustrators sharper their design skills, the emphasis in advertising continues to shift from a text-based sales pitch, describing the product, to a more image-centric approach. Words are few, and images larger. | |||||||||
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Ordinary Products Come Alive As manufacturers look for ways to stand out from the crowd, they sometimes turn to novel images and playful scenes to grab attention. Others find that traditional illustration still works best when introducing new or unusual products, like the tandem bicycle shown above. | |||||||||
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New Delivery Vehicle for Ads The weekly magazine is a relatively new development in the still emerging business of product promotion. It offers a mix of news and features, funded partially by subscription, but increasingly by advertising. Scientific American is one of the first weeklies, drawing its source material from recently-approved patent applications. | |||||||||
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Cartoon-style Illustrations The playful mode of advertising is sometimes displayed in odd places. All the illustrations above are from a clothier's catalog, whose cover appears at left. Interspersed with the pages of normal illustrations (right), are a series of cartoons added just for fun. | |||||||||