why advertising's in decline...

...because we're not using stuff like this any more.

They are apparently stock letterheads from 1963. They were meant for ad folk to use to catch a clients eye. And they are fantastic. They were found and collected by Dan Goodsell and there are more and a ton of other brilliant stuff at a sampler of things.

Comments

[MarcusBrown]

These are so lovely.

I really like the one: "the pills won't work, the this will".

If somebody is prepared to design something like them, and enough people are interested I will have a whole bunch printed up. And we could all start using them to become interesting again.

[Ben]

I don't want to boast, but our letterheads are in a similar vain. I'll upload them somewhere on Monday.

(Sorry, that was boasting wasn't it?)

[Stefan G. Bucher]

Yes, I love these samples, too. Is it the kitsch appeal? Or the nostalgia? I think these are fun, because... they're really fun. Somebody obviously had fun making these things and somebody else said "Hell, why not? These are fun... let's make'em!" A lot of corporate executives (be they at big firms or small) seem to have learned to regard their own instinct for play with great suspicion and even fear. Maybe it's the cold breeze on an uncovered ass?

I remember presenting work to a large corporate client, getting a great spontaneous laugh on the work, and then hearing "Well. Excellent. Can you please give us a few minutes to coordinate our spontaneous response?" No lie. When we came back in the room we faced the death of a 1000 cuts.

The confidence to have fun seems to return only at the very top, as the fulfilled promise of the chain: unconscious competence --> conscious incompetence --> conscious competence. Petrula Vrontikis talks about this in her presentation. She's got a good formula. Assuming a starting point of 100% quality, subtract 20% for every person between the designer and the final decision maker.

Along those lines, I still think the Bauhaus made great advertising.
I couldn't find images online, so I took some photos http://www.344design.com/myspace/bauhaus.html from the great book "Das A und O des Bauhauses." Name the product, show the product beautifully, and get out of the way. (You also have to appreciate the fact that there once was a competitive market for billiard balls. Billiards--the PSP of 1930?