Illustrations from past decades / part 11 / Charles Schridde

These paintings by Charles Schridde were a prominent feature in a Motorola consumer electronics ad campaign in 1961 and 1962, they ran in the Saturday Evening Post and Life magazines.
    The ad copy was full of the usual electronic advances only Motorola's engineers had managed to develop: TVs featured a Golden Tube Sentry Unit which eliminated the warm-up power surge (competitor RCA had Automatic Scene Control for balanced screen brightness); Hi-Fi sets featured Vibrasonic System Sound and Dynamic Sound Focus so you can enjoy concert-hall realism from your LPs; all the cabinets had exclusive designs by Drexel from their American Treasury Collection.  
     Such technical advances required the right setting in the ads and Charles Schridde's art captured the feel perfectly.  Motorola's consumer research found that the pictures were a big hit with the public and with the 1962 campaign each ad had some copy describing the interior design and building architecture at the bottom of the ad.  
     The artwork does seem rather incongruous though because they all show futuristic settings (possibly inspired by Charles Lautner) with huge amounts of space but the electronics and especially the TVs with their small screens belong firmly in the sixties. 
    

 

Corporate identity 1 / Mead Papers / 1979

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Swiss Tourist Office postcards

The Swiss Tourist Office gave away these attractive postcards in their offices around the world.  The message side says they are postcard versions of posters.  I've had them for some time so they might date back to the seventies or earlier.  
   A very Swiss approach to promotion with their excellent photos and straighforward typography.  Who would want to throw them away!  

 

Folio 1-2-3 / Sanders Printing Corporation

Sanders was a New York based printer founded in 1895 and these booklets were issued in the in the sixties to the early seventies (none were dated). 

    They were 7.75 by 9 inches and obviously printed by the company, the first nine had sixteen pages and from ten onwards it varied between twenty and forty pages.  

    Each featured a designer or design company and of the few I have the selection is very impressive.

     Folio 7, designed by Gaynor & Ducas, was an Annual Report for David’s Lemonade Stand which spun off a very clever David’s Lemonade Stand Corporate Identity Manual for Folio 15, Folio 10 was devoted to Mo Lebowitz and his famous (least among designers) The Antique Press, Folio 11 had a handsome design by Herb Lubalin on how to become a successful Art Director.    

    Unfortunately I’ve only got eleven of these lovely printer promotions and the first three are shown below.  Folio 1 featured Chermayeff & Geismar design group; Folio 2 Louis Silverstein at the New York Times; Folio 3 Papert, Koenig, Lois ad agency.  Tom Geismar recently told me the first issue was designed in 1960 or '61.

Issues 4, 5, 7 and 15 are in the September Archive.