So, as most of the connected world knows, ‘Mad Men’ won their third Emmy last night for outstanding drama. I am a huge fan both of the show, and of all things vintage, so I thought I’d celebrate with a retro design post.
I absolutely love vintage design. I think there’s a very personal aspect to the style which is lacking in most current advertising and graphics. While the aughts ushered in large slab fonts, bold proclamations, and by turns blank spaces or computer-generated images, the fifties and sixties were about hand-painted graphics, fresh uneven ink, and joyful invitation. For instance (because it always helps to get a visual), here’s a 1956 and ’57 ad for Pepsi:
And here’s what I got when I Googled recent Pepsi ads:
Plus this winner:
Yeah, who says our generation isn’t classy?
There’s a palatable difference, right? The older ads were infinitely more detailed and they– literally– spoke to you. They said, Here’s a paragraph on why our product might improve your life. Please try us out. They put Pepsi in a lovingly crafted scene of what you hoped could be your reality. Today’s Pepsi just exists. There’s no pitch. The brand name is its own ad, and it needs only the starkest of images to remind you that, hey, you could be drinking a Pepsi right now.
You’ll notice, too, that the color scheme varied an incredible amount over the years: specifically, there wasn’t one then and we rigidly adhere to one now. Advertising and design back in the day encompassed every color under the sun. Here are two car ads from the 1950’s–
And two car ads from today:
Black and variations on white. Exclusively. You will see rare splashes of blue and orange as accent colors, since they tend to represent action, but– again, rare. (And so nobody thinks I was rigging this, I grabbed images from the first page of searches in both cases.)
What really struck me while I was writing this was not only how vastly the advertisements have changed over several decades, but how the audience has changed. Vintage ads were targeted towards vintage people. Modern ads are targeted at our current generation. Back then, people had time to read more. Women stayed at home and researched products. You had to woo them in their magazines, in their supermarkets. You had to speak to them. You had to make fathers want to drive their family to the beach in a Ford, you had to make wives want to cook Christmas dinner in a General Electric stove. You were selling them memories and dreams. Today’s ads are an email to their handwritten letters. We are consuming for the sake of consuming now; we are buying out of boredom, as a status symbol, or from simple greed and need to acquire– not always, but grossly– and the companies know that. They don’t need to court us anymore. They simply put a name, a brand, and an image on a billboard, and that’s enough.
And if you trace it back further, you’ll see just how complex advertising was fifty years before that:
Even the beer was in on it:
And, just for reference–
How far we’ve come in a hundred years, huh?
You knew I wasn’t going to let you out of here without some gorgeous retro fonts for your site and life, so here are my top five Mad Men typographic styles. The first four are free, and they’re all fantastically glamorous. Drink your Pepsi, drive your Ford, bake some muffins, and enjoy.
BONUS: Here’s a current Mad Men ad. And we come full circle–
BECCA. last year, when I was at my old job, we did an entire 7th grade advertising unit. It was the best thing I have ever worked on, and something I am super proud of. I did tons of research into old ads and fell in LOVE. They are THE BEST. Also, we recreated an old 50s style ad and made a modern ad for the same product for students to dissect and compare. It was amazing.
Love this post! One thing to add. As a career marketer the other thing I know and probably the single biggest reason you see merely simple images and very few words is because in the past there were only a few products in each category. They were not competing with thousands and thousands of other products and thousands and thousands of ads trying to get your attention. Plus, there were only a few ways to advertise – print and packaging. Now everything is potential ad space.
Now advertisers have to keep it simple because they have to make an immediate impact. People are numb to the over-stimulation so they need to get our attention. They have to break through the clutter of the overwhelming amount of advertising we are exposed to every day!
Love the retro fonts – they’re just the right thing for invitations!
Loved this article, Becca. You are so well-suited to this gig!
As a fellow font and aesthetic geek, I also appreciate retro ads. Thank you for the links to the fabulous Mad Men fonts…you’d better believe I’m downloading those! And I loved the “nostalgia” piece that you used to illustrate the fonts. Maybe because I’ve been feeling so nostalgic lately, but it really spoke to me. Now I wish I had cable and “Mad Men” in my life.
great article, becca 🙂
and now i’m depressed. as if i needed another reason to wish i was born in another era.
i hope dana is right.
When I started watching Mad Men I really started to pay attention to ads and realized just how boring they have become. It’s sad but like you said we are a culture of RIGHT NOW and if an ad has more than a line or two I think they just get passed over and lost in the shuffle.
Great article, Becca! Look forward to more! 🙂
Great article! Nice way to tie it all together with graphics and text to present the points!
“We are consuming for the sake of consuming now; we are buying out of boredom, as a status symbol, or from simple greed and need to acquire– not always, but grossly” ….agree with you 100%!
Wish people would be more conscious of this, then maybe there wouldn’t be so much credit card debt.
Great article, I wish our ads had a personal aspect to them like before but like you said, “They simply put a name, a brand, and an image on a billboard, and that’s enough.”….to sell their product.
Look forward to your next article 🙂
I think, Becca, that in many respects we are rising up from an aesthetic nadir. Much of the last decade was just plain ugly. But I see promising signs in some surprising places.
I look at cereal boxes a lot, and I was recently delighted that Cap’n Crunch has gone retro. The last boxes of Trix and Cinnamon Toast Crunch were adorably faux-vintage.
Plus, the “Throwback” editions of Pepsi products appear to be successful, and even Coke has improved the design of some of its products.
And as far as nostalgia goes–a subject about which I feel myself an expert–I think I just saw an ad for Target that was very colorful and whimsical, and it featured music from “Free to Be You and Me”, which I haven’t heard in twenty-five years.
Things are looking up.
Becca,
Nice post. Really interesting about the ads and once again brought around full circle. You definitely have a knack for all this! … Now I have add one more blog to read.
LOVE THIS SO HARD.
I have always liked that vintage ads have to really speak to you and tell you all about the product – a whole page on pork ‘n’ beans!
And WHAT is with that lime peeing into the soda?! Gross.
LOVE LOVE LOVE this post! I think your assessment is so spot on too! It disappoints me to see our generation so centered on consumption for consumption’s sake. And even as I say this, I know I’m part of the problem. :-p