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... <BR><BR>To read the rest of this blog entry from The Jalopy Journal, click here.
Those are just too cool! What a killer find I love all things related to Phillips 66! For the little bit that I lived in OKC I went and visited Woolaroc a few times and read everything I could on Frank and Waite Phillips. The pioneering men of the oil boom days are really inspiring.
Man that reminds me of some of my Design classes in JR College....a million years ago....my students never believed me when I told them we did everything by hand.......layout, drawing, lettering...everything.....you actually had to learn a physical skill.....
What a great find. We used similar techniques right up into the '80s. I've cut a ton of ruby, shot a million stats and inhaled/absorbed gallons of thinner. Not familiar with Opal Martin by name, but that is stylish work indeed. Just yesterday I was talking to someone I work with about doing colour breaks on overlays and she looked at me like I had 3 heads. Why is the happy, dancin' guy holding a burglar's mask?
I grew up in Bartlesville and Woolaroc is a really neat place. Frank Phillips is buried there on the property. Cool Art
What great example of why we should respect tradition. Even today to use that kind of talent is something to admire and aspire to. I'm from the old way of thinking in that I prefer a pencil to keyboard. Things like this just back that up for me. Too kool...
I learned the same things laying out yearbook stuff in high school. Computer stuff had just started to come in, but at the time all you could do was plot out very basic stuff. Everything was just cut and paste. Working on my Mac I often forget about the sketching, cutting, and pasting I used to do.
Some of the Photoshopped stuff is art to me, but the old style like this is tops! It's like a homemade cake baked with love, as opposed to one bought at Costco
It is nice to see some of the old production artwork has survived. When I started in this business it was keyline and paste-up, specing type casted in lead and three proof sheets. It required skill and a good eye. Ya, I'm a dinosaur still leaving tracks in the mud. Thanks for sharing Ryan, but now I really feel old.
I did a little bit of googling and can't seem to find anything related to these ads. They may have never even been used? I'd love to find prints of the missing years, maybe Opal still has them? I don't know why the burglar mask either??
I can remember 20 years ago,my sister and my Dad still using the old methods for cut and pasting an ad.They were just starting to use Macs and had a steep learning curve ahead of them. BTW,I collect antique radios and I have a couple of Woolaroc tube sets.
That is a cool find. I would like to stumble on something like that! Being an artist myself I appreciate the hand work in making this. I don't do digital art, all by hand the old way. I do like digital art and appreciate it but if my computer crashes all I miss out on is the H.A.M.B. and don't lose my art making capabilities. Thanks for the great post!
I cut my teeth on Rapidographs, vellum, Rubylith® and the No. 11, and I currently work at a very high speed low drag digital marketing agency. I feel fortunate to have lived and worked in a time where my skills and techniques have truly run the gamut. That featured piece is great.
Ryan - Thanks for sharing. chaddilac - Very cool find! ... I collect Phillips66 petroliana and advertising items, but have never come across that particular print Ad.
the best part is we used to call them mechanicals. man i really miss that stuff. i work in a sign shop and still cut rubylith from time to time for screen printed stuff.
Yea I don't think it was ever OK'd to run the promotion on those... I think it was the bandit mask that kept it from going through???
Ahh..rubylith,stat cameras,chromatecs and tech pens. Reg. marks and overlays.Waxers and boxes of X-acto blades. Started my career as a paste up artist.... man..... that was a while ago. Jerry cans full of rubber cement thinners and borco boards for cutting. The old studios are long gone and are distant memories. Wonderful piece of history.
Awesome Chad! Rubylith, zip-a-tone, registration marks....comforting and frightening at the same time! The wonderful world of screen printing, rubber cement, x-acto blades (I liked the 16s more). I always thought it would've been cool to have a group called Ruby and the AssTones.
Wow! What a great flashback. I started working in graphics at the tail end of real mechanicals and got really good at it. Then had to learn the computer thing. Computers were fun at first, you could do your own typesetting, photos stats etc. But then we were expected to do it all from concept to pre-press. Long hours in a windowless room in front of a computer was not what I signed up for! I slowly got out of it. Thanks for sharing.
Maybe the ad copy is something like "making out like a bandit"? That's an awful big bond he's carrying Was Opal one of those unrecognized secretaries that worked for Don Draper? LOL
I don't know much about the design techniques other than what a good friend who teaches these crafts at my school tells me, but I adore the design, it's oh-so-period... I love everything about the design of the 50's and early 60's, it really was a wonderful kind of styling. Very cool find indeed! Cheers, Eddie
all this and being able to read type upsidedown and backward ahh the printed word still use my hand typesetting brain as a way to read paperwork/catologs on desk in front of someone else and typicly find the info quicker than they can upside right funny is i am horrible at a typewriter..and need spelling correction most of the time multi media gosh kids think they have found a lost art form now
Very cool. My wife has some cool 66 stuff. Her grandfather ran Woolaroc,and her mother grew up on the ranch. Thanks for sharing.
Wow, you just triggered some awful memories. I think I always remember the 11 because I mentally blocked the use of the 16. I always kept an 11 and a 16 on my light table. And the 16 was always used for scraping/cleaning the positives that inevitably had to be blown up from something the size of a postage stamp to say, T-shirt or poster size. (when there wasn't enough lead time to send camera ready art, we often had to work from a horribly bitmapped tiny fax sent by the client) It was always a crap shoot as to which would be faster: Shooting film and cleaning the edges of the line art with the 16 and the red Rapidograph, or tiling a few photocopies and starting fresh with a nice big piece of vellum. And of course the used up blades inevitably plied up along the bottom of my light table as I swapped them out during work... until a put one right through the end of my middle finger while wiping down my light table.
great pieces there. i picked up a couple of advertising sketches by bill medcalf a couple years ago, on for victor gaskets, one for sylvania.