Ashland Oil / Annual Report for the New Generation / 1979

Not really an Annual Report, more a few pages about how Ashland runs its business. Produced by Shareholder Reports for the company and in keeping with pitching the format to a youthful readership ace cartoonist Jack Davis was chosen to make the large size text come alive (though my other fave illustrator Frank Springer would have been just as good).  I don't know if Ashland did any more Reports, probanly not as their products were hardly directed at a youth market.

    I’ve only kept this because of the great illustrations. I don’t suppose Davis worked on many Annual Reports and strangely this Ashland one isn’t mentioned in a recently published retrospective of his work (ISBN 9781606994474)

Imagination 8 / Boats / 1965 / Champion Papers

INDEX / 2011

 
About U.S. / Composing Room August
American artifacts / Lynn Sugarman photography September
Amerika Illustrated / USIA magazine December
Atlantic Fairway / Cunard book / November
Champion Papers
View 1  October
Imagination series 
 1 Office paper July 
 2 Flight August 
 3 Woman August 
 4 Envelopes September 
 5 Modular Car Corporation September 
 6 The West October 
 7 Fire November
Color book / AIGA and Champion Papers October
Come home to jazz / Composing Room July
DayGlo designer's guide book / 1969 November
Eros Magazine  
 1 August
Ford book of styling November
Fortune Magazine booklet August
BF Goodrich / One for the road book July
Herb Lubalin August
General Dynamics Astronautics space cards December
General Motors / Futurama / 1939 World's Fair pavillion August
Great Ideas book / Container Corporation of America  October
Illustrations from past decades  
 1 / November 
 2 / Albert Dorne / Wurlitzer November 
 3 / Carl Evers / Philadelphia Electric Company December
Is it hard? Is it easy? book August
Morandini alphabet July
New York World’s Fair / 1939 souvenir book August
Nude alphabet August
Otto Storch at McCall’s / part 1 August
Orange Bowl Corporation Annual Reports 
 1972 August 
 1973 August 
 1974 September 
 1975 September

Qantas brochure October
Queen Mary souvenir launch book / 1934 November
Simpson Paper Company
  Broad Sprectrum
  1 July 
  2 and 3  October 
  Capone Annual Reports September 
  Dimensions Magazine September
  EverGreen papers December
Sunkist brochure December
Swissair / House of Cards September
Swissair / Kurt Wirth brochure September
Tarot deck / Brown Company December
TGIF Investements / Annual Report  December
Union Camp Paper / Historical personality folders August

TGIF Investements / Annual Report / 1976

I’ve never been quite sure whether TGIF Investments Limited (is that Thank Goodness It’s Friday Investments?) was a real company or not. This Annual Report is sufficiently offbeat to make anyone think it might be a cunning ruse, a bit of design froth for the amusement of media folk but look at the names on the inside front cover and you’ll see that well known outfits are there to look after the TGIF investor. Probably there were too few investors to be concerned about the Report’s unorthodox presentation, the Fund had less than a HK$ million.
     The reason I kept the Report was because of the Sauce (and Application) of Funds photo on the last spread. Possibly the first and last time a real pie has been used as a pie chart and it works beautifully. Also have a read of the Chairman’s Message and study the photo. Page three has a period photo of a crowded meeting with this caption: A spirited discussion amongst the Company’s creditors at the last Annual General Meeting, following upon the previous Chairman’s cogent defense of the Board’s Canadian Land utilization policies.
     The whole Report is very reminiscent of Frank Schulwolf’s wonderfully exuberant 1975 Orange Bowl Corporation Annual Report (see it in September 2011 archive) that used historical movie stills for the illustrations.

 

Illustrations from past decades / part 3 / Carl Evers / Philadelphia Electric Company

The Philadelphia Electric Company ad agency made a wise choice in 1960/61 in using Carl Evers to create these stunning city and industrial landscapes for a marketing campaign. The ads seemed to be more corporate rather than hard sell because the company used illustrations for many years from the mid-fifties.
    I particularly remember several ads in the Saturday Evening Post, each one had three wide paintings showing various aspects of city life (two of the ads are shown above) and I was always amazed at the amount of detail they included. Other ads used one square painting frequently with a bird’s-eye view of a part of the city. Evers was known as a maritime painter who had the knack of capturing very realistic sea and waves so he seemed the obvious choice for these cityscapes crammed with detail. His dock scenes work really well.
    I don’t know how many paintings Evers created for the PEC but years later I still think these are wonderful works of art and I’ve always wondered where they are now.