Phillips 66 Art

These days a fella like me can put together a print ad to hock you some crap in a matter of minutes. A mouse click here, a key stroke there and presto – instant marketing glory! Back in the day, however, the creation of something as simple as a print ad took more time… more love… more dedication. It was a craft as much as a talent.

To illustrate, Chaddilac was recently at an antique store and picked himself up something wonderful – a series of gorgeous ad comps artistically created by Opal Martin for Phillips 66. These were created in 1960 – a time before big honking Macs, Illustrator, Photoshop, etc… To create these, Opal first had to hand sketch a concept. From there, she added color and texture by cutting out her elements from separate pieces of paper and then fixing them to her background layer. If the client approved, she would then do her color separations on pieces of transparent amberlith.

The end result is more than a digital file. It’s a piece of art.

Enjoy: