All-American Ads of the 30s
Hard times, hard sells
At the dawn of the 1930s, modernism started to influence the American advertising industry as waves from the European avant-garde movement made their way across the Atlantic. The trend of literal, uninspired print ads was shaken up by new stylized, symbolic, and even abstract advertisements that relied more on aesthetics than copy. These techniques worked well at first, and ultimately paved the way for advertising as we know it today, but were overshadowed by the need of a country in depression for hard-sell, shirt-sleeve advertising. Subtlety and irony could hardly sell products to a nation struggling to feed itself. Surprisingly, however, the ads of the 1930s reveal nothing of the hard times, painting instead an optimistic picture of affluent American family life. Cheerful and colorful, these ads served an important role as morale boosters, promising happiness and success to a country in crisis.
About the editor:
Cultural anthropologist and graphic design historian Jim Heimann is Executive Editor for TASCHEN America in Los Angeles. He is the author of numerous books on architecture, popular culture, and the history of the West Coast, in particular, Los Angeles and the Hollywood dream factory. For over 30 years he has built an unrivaled private collection of ephemera, which has been featured museum exhibitions around the world and in dozens of his books.
About the author:
Steven Heller, a senior art director of the New York Times and co-chair of the School of Visual Arts MFA Design program, is the author of over one hundred books on design, popular culture, and satiric art. In addition to writing for over a dozen TASCHEN titles, his recent books include Design Literacy Second Edition, Stylepedia, and The Education of a Graphic Designer.
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All-American Ads of the 30s
Heimann, Jim (ED)
Heller, Steven Flexicover 7.7 x 10 in., 768 pages, $ 39.99 |
- Reviews (8 items)
"The next best thing to a basement archive is a series of volumes published by TASCHEN Books, which specializes, among many other things, in publications on vintage materials. This series starts with All American Ads of the 40s, edited by Jim Heimann. The last book looks at the 60s. Each decade is represented in a soft-cover, large-format book. Anyone who approaches with questions about how people lived, ate, felt and consumed in earlier decades will find the TASCHEN ad books an excellent investment. They also make us aware of how some things in the ad world never change."
The Toronto Star, Toronto, Canada
The Toronto Star, Toronto, Canada
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- See also (7 items)
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All-American Ads 1900-1919 The dawn of consumerism: when ads were works of art |