Otis (and Dorothy) Shepard: Billbord Masters

Otis "Shep" Shepard (1894-1969) and his wife Dorothy Van Gorder Shepard (1906-2000) were important figures in American poster and billboard design. Dorothy was trained at the California School of Arts and Crafts, whereas Otis ended formal education after the fourth grade and left home at age 12 to get on with life. His art training was informal, but he had plenty of natural ability along with an active mind that allowed him to exploit it. He got involved with billboards working at Foster & Kleiser, a major West Coast firm, rising to general art director in 1923.

Otis and Dorothy were married November 8, 1929, a few days after the Wall Street Crash, and went to Europe on honeymoon where they experienced first-hand modernistic poster designs. They carried that inspiration home and Otis applied it and the use of the airbrush to a poster for Chesterfield cigarettes (see below). This success led him to go free-lance.

In 1932, not long after he took charge of the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company, Philip K. Wrigley met Shepard and soon hired him as what amounted to design chief for the chewing gum company whose other interests included the Chicago Cubs baseball team and Catalina Island, near Los Angeles. Shepard was involved with everything from billboards to designing Cubs uniforms to creating architectural and design harmony for Catalina. Not bad for a man lacking formal education.

I wrote about Shepard here in 2009 on the 2Blowhards blog.

An excellent book about the Shepards was recently published. Its cover is shown above and its Amazon link is here.

A web site devoted to the Shepards and the book is here. An interview with one of the authors about the Shepards is here.

Below are (mostly) examples of their poster and billboard work.  Unless otherwise noted, the design and artwork was by Otis.

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Otis and Dorothy Christmas card - by Dorothy - 1929

Chesterfield cigarettes billboard - 1930
This launched Otis' national-level career as a billboard artist/designer.  Dorothy was used as the model.

Underwood typewriters poster by Dorothy
Besides images, Dorothy often did typography.

Doublemint chewing gum billboard

Doublemint chewing gum billboard
The Doublemint Twins theme was used for years.

Juicy Fruit chewing gum billboard

Juicy Fruit chewing gum billboard
An interesting feature is the mouth appearing on the slogan banner.

Great Ideas in 1950s Style

If you want a one-stop shop of 1950s style graphic design, I suggest the Container Corporation of America's advertising series called "Great Ideas of Western Man" that also embodied the now more or less defunct "middlebrow culture" of those days. Even the title now would be considered a thought crime in many colleges and universities in America and elsewhere.

A useful source of background information on the the series is here; it is well worth reading because it deals with how the series began, the people involved, the source of subjects and the marching orders for the illustrators.

The CCA ad series followed somewhat similar series from previous decades and continued until around 1975, but the greatest impact was in the early days, starting in 1950. Graphic style of the 1950s and for a while beyond often took the form of simple, flat shapes arranged in some sort of restrained clutter, and that's what we find here. The captions on the images shown below indicate the artist-designers, all of whom were prominent in the field.

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Herbert Bayer
Bayer was the art director, of sorts, for the CCA project.

Ben Shahn

Jacques Nathan Garamond

Lester Beall

Milton Glaser

S. Neil Fujita

Saul Bass

Catalog Imitates Art

The image above is smaller than I would like, but it's the best I could do short of scanning the front cover of a mid-June catalog from Coldwater Creek, a Sandpoint, Idaho based clothing retailer. I noticed it because my wife, a Coldwater Creek fan, had it sitting by our back door, probably anticipating a shopping expedition.

The image struck me because it greatly resembled:

Paseo a orillas del mar (Walk on the Beach) - 1909
This is one of Joaquin Sorolla's better known paintings. It can be seen in the Sorolla museum in Madrid, the artist's former residence.

It's nice to see that Sorolla is getting some backhanded and very subtle recognition. Now I'll have to keep my eyes peeled to see if future Coldwater catalogs have cover art mimicking other paintings.

What is Art?

I suppose some people who got better grades than me in university and graduate school will snicker and chalk it up to intellectual inferiority, and maybe they'd be correct. Nevertheless, I'm willing to admit that I am uneasy being in the same room with elaborate theories or thought structures pertaining to human behavior. So I am extremely reluctant to indulge in that sort of activity, being more comfortable with rules of thumb couched in probabilistic terms. (Theorizing done regarding the physical sciences is different because the subject matter does not possess volition.)

Why am I gun-shy? Perhaps because I was exposed to such theorizing in graduate school and couldn't see the sense of it (my IQ was never stellar). For example, in the Sociology Department at the University of Washington, Stewart Dodd was still around; years before, he had written about reducing human sociological behavior to something like mathematical formulas. I chalk up that effort of his as an exercise in trying something to find out if it was really workable. It turns out that it wasn't, though fans of Isaac Asimov's Hari Seldon might disagree.

And then there was social theorist Talcott Parsons of Harvard who many at Washington and at Dear Old Penn worshiped in those days. I never worshiped him, but nevertheless forced myself to plow through some of his writings because I might have had to deal with his ideas in my Ph.D. examinations. As best I remember, his structure was elaborate and had many details, all of which were considered very important. Another failed effort, in my opinion.

So what does this have to do with art?

Reducing it to a matter of definition. The current Art Establishment seems to hold that just about anything can be considered art if a few people (for instance, an "artist," an art galley and an art reporter or critic) proclaim something as "art." And if someone fails to recognize that something is "art," well, they must be closed-minded or maybe have some other cultural or even mental deficiency. But if just about anything can be art, then art is nothing special. So how can that be, given that certain art objects are worth a good deal of money and might be found and venerated in large museums? A tricky situation, here.

Consider this "art" object, an assemblage titled "My Bed" by Tracey Emin. This article treats it as art, offering as justification that Emin put a good deal of thought and work into its creation.

Now consider "My Desktop," in the image above -- a photo I took just before writing this post. I did not put a lot of thought and energy into creating the fascinating tactile ensemble you see in the photo, but it is not entirely haphazard, either. Objects have their places. Near the upper right are bits of computer equipment. Next to it are writing instruments. Notes and notepads are at either end of the desk, and so on.

To some people, my desktop could, perhaps should be considered art. I don't think it is art. I do not think Emin's "My Bed" is art either. To me it is a kind of public relations stunt related to marketing the Tracey Emin brand and, by the way, has the virtue of being sold for real Pounds Sterling.

As I noted, in our modernist world, the definition of art lies in the eye or mind of the beholder. Some behold "My Bed" as art, other do not. However, it seems that Art Establishment beholders and their followers are definitely more equal than others -- especially compared to those dull-witted philistines incapable of appreciating the nuances of great works of art such as Emin's "My Bed."

Given my distrust of theoretical systems, I'm not going to offer a rigid definition of art, even though I disagree with the current art-is-just-about-anything ethos. But I will toss out an idea. Did you ever notice that young children supplied with a pencil, crayon or some similar tool and a surface to mark on, seem to enjoy creating images of objects they know in their world. This is the nub of art. Their messy beds are not.

Fashion Photography: 1930s and Now

Obviously, some people are perfectly happy with it. But I'm not fond of the trend to a coarser society (c'mon pendulum, please start swinging back!).

One marker (one of those trendy intellectual-speak terms we notice these days) of this is the contrast in photography for women's fashions between now and 50 years ago. Take a look and maybe you'll understand what I mean.

Gallery

By Horst P. Horst - 1938

Toto Koopman by George Hoyningen-Heune - 1933

Marion Morehouse (right) and other model by Edward Steichen, for Condé Nast - 1930

Norman Shearer by George Hurrell - 1935
Yes, this is probably a publicity shot, but it could just as easily have been a fashion photo.

Zara ad campaign photo, Spring & Summer 2012

Chanel 2012 ad campaign photo by Karl Lagerfeld

Versace Fall 2012 ad campaign photo of Elza Luijendijk by Mert & Marcus

Lincoln Grilles : Dip Into the Parts Bin

For a couple of decades, we in North America have become used to seeing Lincoln automobile grilles that looked like these shown below.

These are Lincoln Town Cars, a model recently dropped after many years in production. The upper photo is of a 2002 model, the lower shows a Town Car from around 2011. Their shield-like grille shape dates from the 1993 Lincoln Mark VIII, though rectangular grilles with wide chrome frames and thin, vertical bars continued on some models until the 2002 model year.

Changes in grille design rapidly accelerated by 2007 as Lincoln sales continued to dwindle from the 1989-90 peak. 2013 models have faces such as on the new MKZ model shown here.

I don't like this latest grille design. But I do find it interesting how Lincolns stylists raided the marque's historical parts bin, so to speak, in a search for a different theme from of 1993-2007 and the 20-odd years before that.

Consider the Lincoln Navigator SUV (sport-utility vehicle). The upper photo is of a 2003 model, the lower one shows the 2007 Navigator with a different grille theme. Where might that theme have come from?

Probably from the design Lincolns sported for the 1946-1948 model years. Shown here is a Lincoln Continental Cabriolet.

Then there is the grille on the 2013 Lincoln MKX crossover SUV. It has been around for a few model years and is similar in spirit to the MKZ shown above except that the grille bars are heavy and are aligned vertically rather than horizontally. And where might this have come from?

Once source was probably this 1995 concept car called the Sentinel. But we can push the idea even farther back to...

...the 1939-1941 model Lincoln Zephyrs and Continentals (above is a 1941 model Continental).

In the midst of this stylistic thrashing about, he find the...

...2007 Lincoln MKX (upper) whose grille reminds one of the of the 1964 Lincoln Continental (lower photo).

Where else might Lincoln stylist care to dig for traditionally based grille themes? I suggest these as starters:

The upper image is of a 1942 Lincoln Continental Cabriolet, the lower shows the grille used on 1949 Lincolns.

Varieties of Railroad Travel Posters

This book about North American railroad company travel posters mentioned that early posters tended to feature locomotives, but by some time around 1915 the emphasis shifted to destinations offered by lines. Between these extremes must be a middle ground where voilà ! trains and destinations appear on the same poster. And voilà ! once more, there can be posters showing trains on their way to destinations passing by intermediate points of interest that the lucky tourist will be able to see if he rides the line in question.

This high-level theorizing leaves me breathless and my head woozy, so let's move on to viewing some examples.

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By Leslie Ragan for New York Central - 1938
Ragan created many fine poster illustrations for the New York Central. I selected this one because it features a locomotive to the exclusion of its setting.

By Walter Greene for New York Central - 1928
The New York Central railroad correctly boasted that it was the line that had the lowest level between New York and Chicago; competing lines had to deal with mountainous terrain in places en route. A 20th Century Limited would depart from New York's Grand Central Terminal and head north along the east bank of the Hudson River, crossing to the west side shortly before reaching Albany. From Albany it would proceed along the Mohawk River and then surmount a small crest near Utica to enter the Great Lakes drainage basin. From Syracuse through Buffalo and Cleveland to Chicago was a matter of traveling over fairly flat land.

The scene in the poster shows a train heading south along the Hudson at a point just north of West Point, where Storm King mountain looms on the river's west bank, a sight for passengers to enjoy if they were sitting on the right side of the coach. Storm King is certainly a large hunk of rock, but I suspect that Greene slightly dramatized it.

By Leslie Ragan for New York Central - c.1940
Here we find locomotives at a destination, Chicago in this case, with the Board of Trade building as the backdrop. Ragan depicts four locomotives, three steam powered and one new diesel engine (second from the left). At the far left is an ordinary non-streamlined locomotive. The engines at the right are steam powered streamliners; I wrote about them here.

By Edward Eggleston for Pennsylvania Railroad - early 1930s
Not a train in sight, but who would care about that if there was a lovely swinsuit-clad lass beckoning you to join her on the beach near Atlantic City's fabulous boardwalk? The Pennsy's main routes ran from New York to Philadelphia and then on to Chicago or St. Louis; to reach Atlantic City, one had to catch a spur line from Philadelphia.

Paul Rand, Graphic Designer

A very cursory web search didn't point to the actual source of the above quotation, but the agreement is that it indeed came from graphic designer Paul Rand (1914-96), a dominant player in that field for decades.

Of course, there were some who used it as a departure point for other ideas such as "Don't try to be good, just original" and "Try to be both original and good." Me? I'm with Rand. The modernist emphasis on creativity (= originality) has led to some bad side-effects including the nearly invisible amount of true instruction I received as an undergraduate art student (apparently they thought training would kill creativity). If one tries to be good doing art, a useful dab of creativity has a decent chance of creeping in.

Back to Rand. A website dealing with him is here. It contains a biography, a large collection of photos of Rand and many examples of his work, some of which are shown below.

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Some logotypes Rand designed

Direction magazine cover - March, 1939

Direction magazine cover - Spring, 1943

Book cover - 1958

Unused logotype for Ford - c.1960

My take on Rand is that he was indeed a master of his trade. That said, I think his strongest work was in the field of logotypes and graphic corporate identity.

A good deal of the rest of his work was in the odd, spotty graphics that were most popular from the late 1930s into the mid-1950s. Other designers followed Rand's lead, and a fair amount of it was found in page designs and advertisements that were intended to look "sophisticated." This style is evident above in the images of magazine and book covers. I find it for the most part too unstructured and insubstantial for my visual comfort.

In contrast, Rand's corporate symbology was usually solidly structured incorporating strong design elements. It was highly influential: I recall a student project where I tried to come up with a simple, modernist logo for Miller Beer that of course was a design failure.

Speaking of design failures, Rand's attempt at redesigning the classic "Ford oval" falls into that category. Ford was wise to shelve his proposal. Even the best designers have their off-days, it seems.

Vertical Grille Bars as Styling Theme

Today's cars often incorporate visual focus points and linear features at the front, sides and rear that serve as brand identifiers. This is nothing new: one of General Motors' styling section founder Harley Earl's desiderata was including styling details that would keep viewers entertained as they walked around the car.

But in Earl's day the main focal point was the car's front, or "face" that it presented to the world, and another desideratum was that a car's front should make the brand identifiable from a block or so away. These days the front and grille itself (because air is now usually drawn in through a slot below bumper-level) are no longer necessarily the main focal point thanks to side and rear detailing. (Yes, there are exceptions such as Cadillac Escalades and all Lincolns starting with the 2010 model year.)

Back in the 1940s, Earl notwithstanding, side and rear views of cars were often rather bland in terms of details and not particularly distinctive. So a distinctive grille was the main feature viewers could seize upon to identify what make a car was. For this reason, many brands strove for continuity in grille design themes. Examples are Rolls-Royce, Packard and Cadillac (which has featured an egg-crate motif since the 1941 models). Other makes such as Ford were less consistent.

1940 is also interesting because it was around then that grille openings assumed a horizontal (landscape) format after having been vertical (portrait) for about 30 years. This led some stylists to propose a grille motif featuring vertically positioned chromed bars. Each of the Big Three U.S. car makers had one of their brands assume this style which was retained for many years as an identifier. These makes were General Motors' Buick, Chrysler's DeSoto and Ford's Mercury; examples are shown below.

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Buick

Buick - 1942
Buick introduced its vertical bar theme for its 1939 models and returned for a long run starting with the 1942s, few of which were built thanks to production being curtailed for the war effort.

Buick - 1949
By 1949 the grille bars were more rounded, but the 1942 theme was adhered to.

Buick - 1950
1950 Buicks sported an overhanging teeth look that was derided by observers who called it a "dollar-sign grille" and worse.

Buick - 1952
Buick dropped the overbite for its '51 line and the 1952 models were similar. 1955 was the last year for the vertical bar theme for many years; it crept back in during the 1980s.

Buick - 2012
Current Buicks have a strong vertical bar theme, carrying on the 1940s tradition.

DeSoto

DeSoto - 1942
DeSoto used the vertical bar theme on its 1941 line, but I'm showing a 1942 car because its "face" is distinctive and classic in its way. The grille is waterfall-like, for instance. But the important detail is the headlights covered by doors that opened when the lights were turned on. Hidden headlights were a fad around 1970, but DeSoto only had them on its war-constrained '42s.

DeSoto - 1949
The entire Chrysler line got its post-war restyling for 1949 and DeSoto featured grille bars of varying width.

DeSoto - 1953
The bars got chubby for the 1951 model year and that theme was continued in 1953 when Chrysler offered it next round of restyled bodies.

DeSoto - 1955
The 1955 model year (another completely new set of bodies for Chrysler) was the last for DeSoto's vertical bar theme. I like the way the grille opening makes those little hops above the bumper guards. Sadly, Chrysler abandoned the DeSoto brand during the 1961 model year.

Marcury

Mercury - 1946
Mercury didn't adopt vertical bars until 1946. Note how thin they are.

Mercury - 1949
The '49 Mercury is considered by many as the classic version of the brand. Grille bars are still fine, but their expanse is greater and the convex curve of the ensemble ads greater reflection from the sky making the grille seem bolder.

Mercury - 1952
I find the restyled 1952 Mercurys interesting because of their integral bumper-grille that was innovative. The vertical bars are found only at the bottom -- sort of like chopped-off remains of the 1950 Buicks' toothy overbites.

Mercury - 1958
By the late 1950s Mercury was drifting away from the vertical bar theme, though vestiges can be seen here. By the mid-1960s only the sporty Mercury Cougar line retained vertical bars.

Mercury - 2010
In the years leading up to Mercury's 2011 demise the vertical bars theme was brought back to the fore, perhaps as a last-gasp attempt to distinguish the brand's products.