The Evolution of Print Ad Design from the Mad Men Era to Today
Print ads: notably not dead. Even today, some of the most creative advertising comes in the print medium. Without the luxuries of video, animation, and 30 seconds of voiceover telling you exactly why you should buy a product (and all its side effects), print ads are where you find some of the most outside-the-box thinking in the advertising industry. You need to be creative if you’re going to get and keep a reader’s attention when they could easily turn the page and go on their merry way.
When contemplating the unique challenge of print advertising, it’s hard not to be reminded of the show “Mad Men.” So much of the copywriting and art direction in the show was specifically centered around print and out-of-home advertising with little consideration for TV ads. The show’s most famous ads, like “Pass the Heinz,” were only meant for static mediums.
“Mad Men” was about the “Golden Age” of advertising (the 1960s and thereabouts), and isn’t it interesting that the “Golden Age” of advertising was largely about print? Print ads in that time had a look that is not only synonymous with its time but easily recognizable. If you asked anyone regardless of age or how much they care about the advertising industry and showed them some throwback print ads in this blog, they’d immediately be able to place their decade.
Those ads present such a stark contrast to anything you’d see in a magazine today that it makes you wonder how we got here. Sure, pretty much everything changes over *looks at watch* 80ish years, but what are the reasons for those changes?
The Good Old Days of Print Advertising
Here is the aforementioned easily recognizable print ad style of the “Mad Men” era. Obviously not every ad from that time followed the same formula, but this carefully curated list should serve as a decent representation of the typical print ad of the era. And, to be clear, we're admiring the writing and design of these ads, not the often tone-deaf, sexist, health-devastating content itself.
What can we find in common about these three ads, and what does that tell us about the ads themselves and the goals of the Mad Men behind them?
First, the majority of the people in these ads are drawn–all in that same bright photorealistic-but-clearly-still-drawn uncanny valley style. Advertisements from this era were rife with this same style of animation.
It was even more common in the 1950s when they used photography in their ads so little that you’d be forgiven for thinking the camera hadn't been invented yet. In the 1960s, it seems like they started to come around to the idea of using photography, and even when they did, it had a saturated look to make the colors brighter, almost to look like the drawings.
Why were so many ads drawn, and all in more or less the same style? Well for one, there was the issue of overhead. Photography without an iPhone used to be expensive.
Not only was the equipment itself expensive, but they also had to buy film. For ad agencies of the time it was cheaper to let an artist who was already on the payroll draw an ad by themselves. Otherwise they had to go through the rigmarole of casting models, building a set, and getting photos shot professionally.
Something else that was especially true of the time is that drawings offered much more control than photography. Photos were shot on film. Film needs to be developed. While today you can take a photo and look at it immediately, seeing if the lighting or composition needs to change, back then you’d have to wait probably until after the shoot was over to look at the photos. If the corner of the craft services table was creeping into the shot, you wouldn’t know until it was too late. Drawings allowed for total control over the composition of the ads and a faster revision process.
But that doesn’t explain the consistency of the weird, bright style.
One of the more notable facts about the 1960s is that it was in the past. They had three TV channels. The Nintendo Wii wouldn’t be invented for another 47 years. Life was dull. The bright color palettes served to draw peoples’ eyes. “Look over here! I’m bright! This is probably something really exciting.”
As fictional ad man Don Draper put it, “Advertising is about one thing. Happiness.” And you can make drawings look as happy as you want.
How It’s Going With Print Ads Today
Now let’s compare those ads from the “Golden Age” to what we have today. The same caveat applies: not every print ad you’ll see today follows the same formula as these—and print ads today are more varied than back then if anything—but this is just meant to be a representation of the era.
How do these differ from the previous batch of examples?
Maybe the most obvious one is that there’s less copy. Like… a lot less. Barely any in fact. It feels like every copywriter in the 1960s was beefing with the designers at their respective agencies and was just adding copy out of spite.
There’s a focus on visual storytelling. With fewer words to spell everything out for you in excruciating detail, the imagery needs to explain the product. Take a look at the Sharpie ad for example. It’s the words like “Mick’s gonna love this!!!” that connect the final dots and help you figure out what the ad is implying, but without the background looking like a crumpled-up piece of paper, the story it’s trying to tell wouldn’t make sense.
On a normal background, “Mick’s gonna love this!!!” doesn’t mean anything, but you change that one element and you can imagine a brainstorming session with different members of The Rolling Stones drawing a logo, deciding it’s terrible, crumpling up the paper and throwing it across the room into an already full wastebasket, only for another member to take a look at it and decide it’s great. The idea the ad wants to get across is that Sharpie is a pathway to your next great idea, but they show rather than tell.
Numerous ads today also have simpler, maybe even minimalist designs. While “Mad Men” ads were all about being bright and loud to grab people’s attention, it seems like everything today is bright and loud, so we tune it out. It’s the plain, almost shockingly simple ads like the third one here that grab our attention. It’s just a white rubber duck on a white background. We’re immediately curious and then remember, “Oh yeah, rubber ducks are usually yellow.” Then we read “We Don’t Like Yellow” and see a URL for a dentist’s office and it all makes sense.
Individual Ads Need to Accomplish Less
Today, there are more touchpoints between people and companies that are advertising than ever before. Digital and social ads have drastically increased the number of ads people see in a day. It’s in the thousands. Because companies have so many more ways of reaching their consumers, each individual ad has to carry less of the load.
In the 1960s, however, when you put an ad in a magazine, it might be the only ad for your company that a given reader sees in weeks, so you really need to squeeze the most out of it. That’s one reason why these print ads would often be accompanied by novels about the product.
Attention Economy
The attention economy has also changed dramatically. With so many ads vying for our attention, consumers give less attention to each one. It’s not just about having the time to read a full-page ad, but the fact that nobody wants to read a full-page ad. That’s why the clean, minimalist, clever visuals have taken over. The goal is to catch someone’s eye and then make them think about what they’re looking at, rather than overwhelm them with information.
Could the Mad Men Style Make a Comeback?
Print ads today have to accomplish different things than they did back in the 60s, and so of course they’re going to look different. Still, there is an undeniable charm to the old way of doing things. If that style ever did make a comeback, we might make an ad that looks something like this.
Are you clamoring for a return to the "Golden Age" of advertising? Or have you just seen the show and want to talk about how great Don Draper's Lucky Strike pitch was? Either way, there's a spot waiting for you in our non-smoking conference room. Schedule a meeting below and we can get started on your next print ad.