Illustration in Advertising
A 1925 McGraw-Hill textbook by W. Livingston Larned, vice president and art director in chief of the Ethridge Company, on pictures in magazine and newspaper advertising.
What it is
A 1925 McGraw-Hill textbook by W. Livingston Larned, vice president and art director in chief of the Ethridge Company, on pictures in magazine and newspaper advertising. It opens by asking whether a campaign should be illustrated at all, lists eighteen jobs a picture can do, from showing the package to dramatizing the undramatic, and cites a car maker who stood out among illustrated rivals by running type only. More than thirty short chapters follow, each on one decision: composition, choosing the theme, continuity across a series, directing the eye, borders, white and black areas, perspective, the product at heroic size, glorifying homely products such as the Fordson tractor, trade marks brought to life, negative illustrations, poster value, character study, pen, woodcut, crayon and mechanical shading, humor, history and photography. Reproduced ads from Bon Ami, Vacuum Oil, Wear-Ever and others carry captions on why each works.
Why read it now
Several claims hold up. Continuity: Larned reports that ads sharing a family resemblance do better than one-off executions, and modern work on distinctive brand assets and on recurring characters in IPA effectiveness data points the same way. White space as a defence against crowded neighbors applies to feeds and marketplace listings. His rule that a picture must do a selling job, not decorate, is the right test for any creative brief, and his list of eighteen jobs works as a checklist of what an image is for. The chapter on negative illustrations is careful: fear is fair when the product exists to prevent the harm and wrong when added for drama, which fits research showing fear appeals work best when the ad also shows a clear way out. What has dated: the techniques (woodcut, Ben Day, crayon) are history, his certainty about white space is asserted rather than shown, and his relaxed account of patched and retouched photographs now runs into rules on misleading altered images. Use: pick one visual device and repeat it, in new situations, across every ad in a series.
Passages worth keeping
Advertising is at its lowest ebb when it becomes a colorful luxury.
يسقط الإعلان حين يتحول إلى زينة ملونة لا تخدم البيع.
The value of white space is regulated by what is put into it.
المساحة المشتراة لا قيمة لها في ذاتها، وقيمتها بما يوضع فيها.
One of the most dangerous practices connected with modern advertising composition, layout, and art embellishment is to measure the value of space by how much can be crowded into it.
من أخطر الأخطاء أن تقيس قيمة المساحة الإعلانية بكمية ما تحشره فيها، فالازدحام يُضعف الانتباه.
There must be an unusually valid reason to frighten a prospect into doing something.
لا تخوّف العميل ليشتري إلا إذا كان للتخويف سبب حقيقي قوي مرتبط بالمنتج نفسه.
Professional photographers smile at the thought that the camera cannot lie.
المصورون المحترفون يعرفون أن الكاميرا يمكن أن تكذب، فالصورة قابلة للتركيب والتعديل مثل الرسم.
The scanned text has OCR errors. The passages are quoted from it, with only obvious slips fixed.
What it teaches best
Read the original archive.org
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