Customer Reviews

All-American Ads 30s

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You expect a book like this to be fun, and it is! The hard sell approach, the inflated claims, and the infamous phrase, "It isn't brand X if it doesn't say Y!" (as if your brain is scrambled) ... it's all hilarious now. And even when these techniques get tedious, the drawings and paintings are colorful and well-designed by themselves.

The ads don't mention the Depression, but you can see it in the phrases "stretch your dollars" and "these days..." That's a technique auto makers adopted after Sept. 11th, as in "we're getting America moving again with 0% financing." In that sense, ad makers fashioned a social history that belongs alongside stories of travelling Okies and bread lines. These ads showed what people hoped for, what they wanted to become. And that's just as important as where they were. So while post-Sept. 11th ads wanted to get the family back to the dinner table, so Depression-era folks wanted to get their friends back for champagne and elegant dinner parties.

Still, there is enough variety here to reflect many points of view and design style. Some ads were clearly ahead of their time. Some were still mired in Victorian imagery. A few are really shocking, like the public service ad with a drawing of a sinking Lusitania with the headline, "The Lusitania Sank. So What of It?" (It was an ad for World Peaceways.)

I am no historian or designer or advertiser ... but I found this book mind-blowingly fun.

Taschen's fourth volume of the All-American Ads series provides a big look back to the day before yesterday. Steven Heller provides a short overview of the decade and explains that despite the Depression magazines, in which most of these ads appeared, had very high circulations. For a few cents readers could escape the reality of everyday life and be entertained by the features and the colourful advertisements. Naturally there is no real mention of the Depression though some of the ads sport the little NRA symbol and the words `We do our part'

The format of this book is the same as the others, nine sections (Alcohol and tobacco, Automobiles, Consumer products, Entertainment, Fashion and beauty, Food and beverages, Industry, Interiors and finally Travel) provide whole, two or four ads to a page and fortunately none of them are angled or overlap. The digital reproduction of the 1500+ ads is excellent, it is always a problem to reproduce anything that is already printed because it can create screen clash but these are reproduced with clean colors and sharp lines (thanks to 175 dpi).

Most of these ads are copy and picture heavy, stylish use of white space and clever typography was years away, though three ads for Pierce Arrow autos on pages 176-177 stand out because they do seem very modern. Illustrations rather than photography were the main visual elements with headlines and copy used to fill any space that was left.

This as a super book if you are interested in social history or want to see how copywriters created product desire more than sixty years ago or you are just curious about things your grandparents reminisce about. Maybe they remember the 1932 ads for the Pitcairn autogiro, after all no home should be without one!

Once again, Taschen has put forth a wonderfully illustrated and highly enjoyable publication. The ads are superb. The reader can truly immerse themselves in popular culture and daily life in the United States during the 1930s. What I most appreciate is the fact that Taschen presents the materials as is; they let the ads speak for themselves. I consider it one of the best resources of popular culture from the era.

An awesome collection of ads from this decade. Hundreds of pages w/ ads of all categories. Very enjoyable. I'm an advertising major & this is a fun book to own!!!

The book arrived in one month, which was fast if you consider that it generally takes more than this to arrive, the book came in excelent conditions.

Amazon is always a reliable store.

This is the era where ads went from being art-deco to a more classic style that I love. This entire series is great in general and hope they make a 90s and 00s version