James McMullan Collection, Box 1 Folder 7: Caprolan Nylon advertisement, 1966.

James McMullan designed and illustrated this piece for Caprolan nylon during his first year at Push Pin; it appeared in the September 7, 1966 issue of Women’s Wear Daily.

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James McMullan Collection: Roche Laboratories brochure for Taractan, 1965.

Well before the boom of direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising, highly adventurous drug advertising was aimed almost exclusively at physicians.

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James McMullan Collection: The New York Times advertising supplement for Westinghouse Broadcasting Company, March 5, 1967 / Fort Wayne by James McMullan.

From the James McMullan Collection, a look at some of the best illustrators who got their start the 1950s and 60s.

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Milton Glaser Collection: Milton Glaser for Container Corporation of America.

Everything that enlarges the sphere of human powers, that shows man he can do what he thought he could not do, is valuable. – Samuel Johnson

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Ten years before the rise of the supermarket generic brand, Champion Papers produced these colorful generic packaging designs for a series of print advertisements.

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Ed McCabe Collection, Series II: Box 2, Folder 8.

The copy for the beloved Maxell “blow-away guy” ad (ca. 1979) was composed by Ed McCabe.

I cannot count how many times I tore through this sparse bachelor pad on packages of XLII tapes. The translation to TV (here, courtesy of YouTube) isn’t quite the same, since however loud-sounding “Ride of the Valkyries” may be, it cannot be as powerful as the imagined decibels conveyed by the print ad, with tie and lampshade frozen permanently in full blow-back amid gusts of high-fidelity.

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Madison Avenue, October 1969. From the Henry Wolf Collection, Series VI. Box 19, Folder 6.

Pictured: Sandy Kiersky, media director for Trahey/Wolf advertising and her fantastic eyeglasses. Click through for the full frame of this shot and pictures of their futuristic mid-century office at 477 Madison Avenue.

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Henry Wolf Collection, Series 2: Box 5B, Folder 28.

Wolf shot the photograph for this ca. 1980s Papermate ad, which was originally a full magazine spread. Presumably the art direction credit here includes the choice of this outrageous but strangely compelling combination of magenta boots, purple legwarmers, and high-cut acid-wash jeans. Against their layered, cool-tone palette, the yellow barrel of the pen stands out, its silver clip echoing the silver italic copy. The only snag here, in my opinion, is the affected rhythm of “Think, Re-think, State, Re-state,” which falls too comfortably into the exhausted “Big Idea” voice that was so prevalent in advertising a few decades before, and doesn’t really achieve any meaningful interaction with the image.

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