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.