Graphic Journey Blog

Stephen Frankfurt: The big idea

Stephen Frankfurt 

Stephen Frankfurt was one of the original Madison Avenue advertising Mad Men. His ads were ‘ideas based’, using sharp, witty, well-crafted copy – rarely produced these days. One of the areas that he had a particular talent for was promoting Hollywood movies, and that was where I first heard of him back in 1963 when he created and directed the title sequence for To Kill a Mocking Bird: one of the most beautiful and tender introductions to a film. Had he done nothing else in his career, that single project would have marked him out as special.

Much has been written and discussed about the sequence. For me, it remains one of the most arresting opening title sequences to a film ever, even over the many titles of the mighty Saul Bass. But, interestingly, looking back at his advertising work now, one can see that he used a regular kit of parts to create his own particular signature when it came to advertising films – always a simple idea with a twist and often using closely cropped profiles of a face, as you will see in the following run of some of Frankfurt’s posters.

Above some of the feature film promotion posters that Frankfurt worked on many using recurring large imagery with the addition of a small graphic 'trigger'.

In 1968, Stephen Frankfurt became the president of Young & Rubicam Advertising – the youngest ever to hold the position. Along with the highly innovative agency Doyle, Dane and Burbank, he was at the forefront of conceptual advertising, which transformed television commercials from straightforward sales pitches into sophisticated, concept-driven mini works of art. The approach had a profound influence on the British creative scene.

Above just a sampling of press advertisements overseen by Frankfurt showing his love of simplicity, intelligent copy and beautiful imagery.

Stephen Frankfurt died in 2012 at the age of 80 following a struggle with Alzheimer’s. A sad end to a great career.

You can see the full title sequence from To Kill A Mocking Bird here

And a short film with Stephen Frankfurt explaining how it was achieved here

There is a rather good BBC documentary showing Frankfurt at work and play in the 1960s.

And there is a very good blog piece written by British advertising man Dave Dye.

Graphic Journey’s mini creative review of 2016

Of the many things I’ve seen and heard this year, the following, in my view, are the best, with a few of the worst that really infuriated me.

TV

The Icelandic noir crime series Trapped was one of the better crime productions, not only for its creepy storyline but also for the wonderful, relentless, snow-swept locations.

Happy Valley. Series 2 was as magnificent as the first series, with consistently outstanding writing from Sally Wainwright and wonderful performances from the entire cast, especially Sarah Lancashire.

Fleabag. An amazingly revealing and original series from writer and star Phoebe Waller-Bridge. It is funny, edgy and very moving. 

Going Forward. Another outstanding writer/comedian is Jo Brand, and Going Forward was funny and touching in equal measures. 

Films

Joachim Lafosse’s, L'Économie du Couple (After Love). An intense observation of a marriage breakdown performed with utter commitment by the film’s two leads Bérénice Bejo and Cédric Kahn. More

20th Century Women is set in Santa Barbara in the late ’70s and focuses on Dorothea Fields (Annette Bening), a wonderfully eccentric single mother and divorcée living in a dilapidated but charmingly eclectic house where she lets two rooms to help make ends meet in order to bring up her son as a decent human being, with much angst and hilarity on the way. Written and directed by ex-graphic designer Mike Mills, whose earlier film Beginners was a delight too. More

I, Daniel Blake is Ken Loach’s precisely targeted indictment of our welfare state. It is Loach at his very best. More

Following A Single Man, director Tom Ford follows up with Nocturnal Animals and proves that he is to be taken seriously in this nearly perfect thriller. More

Manchester by the Sea. An incredibly powerful and moving story of loss, with an Oscar-deserving performance from lead Casey Affleck. 

Ethel and Ernest. The story of Raymond Briggs’ young life. Despite it being an animated film, it pulls no punches. Humorous, beautiful, moving and tragic. Watch it

Product

Terence Woodgate's elegant  Solid - Carrara marble table lamp.

Theatre

Yerma. The Young Vic restaging of Federico Garcia Lorca’s 1934 tragic masterpiece ‘Yerma’, reset in 21st-century hip London society. With two standout performances from Billie Piper (in the main role as ‘Yerma’) and Brendan Cowell as her husband. More

The Almeida’s stunningly brilliant production of Uncle Vanya. Imaginatively staged and directed by Robert Icke, with a wonderful cast headed by Paul Rhys. 

Architecture

 

The Switch House Tate. One of the most inhospitable, dismal architectural experiences of 2016. Bleak and cold, with no attempt to create an uplifting experience for the visitor. More

Graphics/Branding

Two diabolical rebrands appeared on the scene. First was the hideous Addison Lee courier and car service. It could have been so good in the right hands. 

British Steel introduced a shamefully embarrassing new identity, as opposed to reintroducing David Gentleman’s perfectly thought-out original.

But there was a welcomed and brave move in accepting that an earlier logo from the 1960s still works perfectly. Sean Perkins at North resurrected the baby from the bathwater of the ill-judged Co-operative rebrand of a few years ago.

Nat West's so-called "gentle evolution" of their logo by making what was originally simple complicated. It will be hardly noticed by most but will cost many millions to implement. Such is the insulting disregard that banks have for the public's view of them.  More

This is graphic design at its very best: simple, meaningful, intelligent and witty. Created by Paula Scher at Pentagram NYC for The Heart & Stroke Foundation of Canada. 

Posters

2016 saw another group of inept ‘fine art’ collection of posters, this time for the Rio Olympics. Repeating the dreadful mistake of the 2012 UK Olympics with equally dreadful posters, again headed by Tracey Emin. An insult to all serious poster designers. More

Books

A Life in Letterpress. Alan Kitching’s life work in print. A doorstopper of a book, beautifully illustrated.

Nobrow has published the graphic novel, Audubon that centres on explorer John James Audubon’s ornithological quest across America during the 19th century. Written by Fabien Grolleau and sensitively illustrated by Jérémie Royer. 

Advertising

Wales’ Christmas drink-driving campaign, by the Cardiff- based agency Bluegg, underlines the tragic loss of a loved one on Christmas Day.

Art

The Royal Academy of Arts, Abstract Expressionism exhibition was an absolute joy but rather too crowded.

Stamps

Agatha Christie: An intriguing series of six stamps designed by Jim Sutherland and Neil Webb, complete with hidden clues.

TV Commercials

The wonderfully pure Wes Anderson envisioned Christmas train trip for H&M. Watch it

Radio

Florian Zeller’s award-winning stage play The Father, translated by Christopher Hampton for BBC Radio 3. Centred on a man disappearing into the world of dementia. With a moving performance from Kenneth Cranham. 

Behind the logo

"A calculated advertising ploy to present itself as a respectable society-loving organisation."

This was the actor Mark Rylance's criticism of BP's funding of the arts on BBC's BH programme last Sunday.

BP have renewed their sponsorship of the Royal Opera House, British Museum, National Portrait Gallery and Royal Shakespeare Company. Rylance's view is that BP is using these organisations to 'white wash' what is going on behind the scenes.

His views chime with my own about the many bank's force feeding us with their sudden conversion to 'caring ' about their customers and society.

Michael Woolf wrote a thought-provoking piece about logos for Design Week. You can read it here.

I posted a comment expanding on the topic but, for whatever reason, Design Week chose not to publish it - the second time this has happened to me within a month. A pity as I had mistakenly thought that one could use the comments space to open up the debate to a more thought-provoking view beyond the purely visual. It would seem not.

So for anyone interested here follows my comment on Michael's DW piece:

I completely agree with Michael Wolff's analysis concerning the many recent inept and dubious rebranding and that horrible description, 'refreshing' exercises.

Banks, all of them, have angered me more than any other area in recent years. And even more, now that they are trying to ingratiate their way back into our pockets. I loath them for their callous disregard for the public's intelligence. The flurry of commercials, press ads and posters informing us that they now desperately 'care' about society and only want to contribute to the good. And more often than not preseeded with a rebrand (Barclays and Lloyds). Just like the recent Nat West launch. All that insignificant claptrap about the origin of the logo to signify that in was the coming together of the National Provincial Bank, Westminster Bank and District Bank is totally meaningless to a 2016 audience.
This is a bank using a rebrand as an Elastoplast in an attempt to mask the sins and criminal activities of past decades.

If you peel it back, under the surface you will discover that many thousands of hard working employees have been made redundant and many branches shut.

Meanwhile, they will roll out this farcical, PR spin and advertising lead, almost indistinguishable new/old identity to all their fascias, ATM machines, projecting signs, livery, credit cards, print etc.

Above the existing logo. 

And the new one. Is this change worth the millions it will cost to implement?

To change all of these...

and these...

and these.

Hardly anyone, except for a few geeky designers, will ever notice. It is such an obscene waste of money that will no doubt run into many millions.

Had Nat West really wanted to make a genuine gesture of recompense, far better to use that money to help society in conjunction with a press campaign sporting the headline, WE ARE SORRY .' big and bold, spelling out exactly why and what they have done about their shady past dealings with customers. To my knowledge, none of the banks has really apologised to the public in this way. Nat West and the others won't of course and will no doubt stand by their vomit inducing commercials, the Nat West black and white one pointing out the shortcomings of society. How ironic and insulting. judge for yourself here.

Bank robbery

I know I sometimes tend to have the occasional rant. But banks really do it for me. Over the past year, many of the British ones have been, so called, 'refreshing' their brands.

The latest to do this is Nat West. Call me cynical but I can't be alone in thinking that all this is just a strategy to divert us from the fact that they have all been abusing their customers for years. Most are downright criminals, but will never see the inside of a prison. Suddenly we are all expected to believe their new slogans like "We are here for you", they now want to be our best friends. Barclays refer to themselves as 'Your Bank'.

Lloyds say " Because your family matters", RBS, "The bank that earns you trust". And back to Nat West, they are saying "We'll help you along the way" and "We know a helping hand is always nice". Just wait until there is an economic downturn. Where will your new friends be then?

How can the people that write this stuff look themselves in the mirror? It is unbelievable.

The new (not really) Nat West logo has three interlocking cubes. How original.

Hang on a mo, I walked around my neighbourhood in Clerkenwell yesterday and noticed this in a tile shop window. Pretty naff yes, and they are also using multi-coloured boxes.

And then there's the blocky multi coloured typeface.

Actually a bit like this.

Apparently, the idea is “... a gentle evolution of the brand rather than a reinvention.” With no doubt, a great deal of money behind the project, a little more research wouldn't have gone amiss.

And to support this Nat West rebrand they have produced the above commercial, get the box of tissues ready, here it is.

Not so long ago we had Barclays feeding us with Loachian-style commercials centring on the loyalty of good old British football supporters in a variety of scenarios showing ordinary people cheering on Barclays-sponsored teams. “Thank you – you are football,” says Barclays as 86-year-old Everton supporter Billy Ingham sets off to see his beloved team play. Utter sentimentality to pull at the heart strings to make you feel all warm and cuddly about Barclays.

Meanwhile, behind the scene, banks have been cutting tens of 1000's of staff and closing 100's of local branches, all due to the crisis created by their criminal activity of miss-selling of protection insurance and all the other scams and schemes going back decades.

But of course, the banking top dogs (and they are always mostly dogs) continually increase their annual salaries and perks to engorge their already obscene amounts. And even if they are occasionally fired, they walk away with a mini lottery win in their pockets due to their watertight contracts concocted by top lawyers and accountants.

Hearing Teresa May on Wednesday telling us she is going to clamp down on this kind of greed is just pure waffle. We all know that absolutely nothing will happen. Yet more vacuous PR for a few sound bites in the media.

Now that the banks can no longer rob us under the radar, they are  going to do it directly. Those of you with bank business accounts will soon receive letters informing you that you will  have to pay for having your money in the bank. So not only will you receive no interest on your deposits, but you will now find yourself having to pay for every transaction and many other services that were historically free.
Well, they need to pay for all this brand refreshing and topping up the top dog bonuses. But actually we, the gullible customer, will be paying for all that. What suckers we all are.

The greed and deception are so well ingrained in the banking fraternity that it is still filtering through and there are many more skeletons in the safe.

And they say we should stop bashing the bankers. I say get out the baseball bats. They are shameless. One also has to question the morality of our creative community in colluding in this kind of cynical subterfuge. Not a single bank has run a press campaign to say SORRY. 

Meanwhile, across the pond, there is a fearless woman (my current heroine) Elizabeth Warren (above) who is taking the US bank robbers to task at the Banking committee Hearings. Just watch her dismantle the CEO of Wells Fargo, John Stumpf, she is truly amazing.

 

When advertising was advertising

This is a favorite book, the 1971 New York Art Directors Club of New York Annual. It has a ballsy no-nonsense typographical structure and layout. The work is very much the hero and not the designer of the book, but having said that, I love the design. But most of all I love the look and copy in the advertising.

We are talking about the era of great ideas, wonderful copy and photography. Equally great work in a similar vein was being produced here in the UK. But those days of long lovingly written copy, with witty headlines, are a thing of the past. We live in a visually driven age of advertising. Advertising that has to communicate instantly and globally.

Who knows perhaps one-day intelligent and beautifully written ads will return. Anything is possible

Coca-Cola: Myth and reality

 

As designers, we have always loved the logo, the bottle and the charm of those nostalgic Coca-Cola Christmas press advertisements – the smiling Santa brandishing that highly desirable bottle to the adoringly expecting children.

But the reality is a far more sinister matter. Whether by design or coincidence, since Jamie Oliver’s highly disturbing programme screened last month about the explosion in diabetes caused by the excessive use of sugar in our foodstuffs, Coca-Cola has been on a charm offensive. A few weeks back, they were out in force giving away free cans to passers-by at my local station in Clerkenwell.

Snapped from a bus a little later.

And they also ran a series of full-page colour advertisements in the nationals. Now it would seem that Coca-Cola has set to work on injecting large amounts of money into medical research in an attempt to counter the negative medical claims against their product. Echoes of the tobacco industry’s attempts at lobbying the benefits of smoking come to mind. 

Snapped in a 99p store.

But I find the behaviour of the large supermarkets that push litre bottles of Coca-Cola and Pepsi in their 2 for 1 offers (always positioned at the entrance to their stores) is shameful and clearly a collusion with these international drinks companies in order to get kids addicted as early as possible – generations to come will be packed into our already overstretched health service to the cost of everyone.

This is one area where the nanny state would be a very good thing.

Arnold Varga: Homespun perfection

Arnold Varga was one of America’s multi-talented creatives. He illustrated, designed and art directed. And he did all three to supreme perfection. 

His work had an impeccable beauty that was highly individual and timeless. He was playful with type, often making witty interplays with his illustrations. Those illustrations could be dense and meticulous or reduced down to starkly minimal and clean graphic lines. 

He was born in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, and kept close to his birthplace throughout his life. A childhood friend, the great American photographer Duane Michals, said of him: “He worked in this little steel town, without any real nurturing, and he bloomed into a major talent. He made it happen on his own energy.” 

Varga also had another obstacle: being almost blind in one eye. But it didn’t stop him. He would draw and take his portfolio around local department stores, which would often result in a commission. 

In the 1950s, he took on a job as a messenger at the Sterling Lindner Davis department store in Cleveland, Ohio. Eventually, it led to him becoming head of advertising there. He moved on into the world of advertising, joining the agency Ketchum, MacLeod & Grove, Inc. He later landed a job at BBDO in Pittsburgh. 

During the late 1950s, he began to produce some outstanding freelance work for several department stores, including Horne’s, Cox’s, Wanamaker’s and Higbee’s, often collaborating with copywriter Alan Van Dine, whom he’d met at BBDO. Describing Varga’s working process, Van Dine said: “It was completely backwards. Arnold would say ‘I want to do a watermelon’. Or ‘a baby carriage’. My job was to come up with something lively to connect the visual. We didn’t know at that point which client was going to see it.”

In 1959, the National Society of Art Directors named Varga Art Director of the Year, which included former recipients Saul Bass, Charles Coiner, Walt Disney, Leo Lionni and Bradbury Thompson.

In 1967, he produced a memorable Christmas advertisement for Horne’s department store (below). It depicted an immaculate portrait of Dickens’ Scrooge. 

It was so successful that the store had to produce postcards and Christmas cards to give away. Milton Glaser said that Varga’s images were “impeccably rendered and beautiful... One of the main tests of these things is their durability, and they are still very fresh, very innovative.” 

From the late 1960s to the early ’70s, he had an agent who said that Varga was very picky about what he would take on, often turning down high-paid jobs in favour of a small one that paid next to nothing because he felt it had more potential. 

Arnold Varga moved to Pleasant Hills, a suburb of Pittsburgh, where he ran a sort of one-man agency from home. He worked on various commissions from mainstream clients until he retired in the late 1970s to look after his elderly mother, who died at the age of 96. After which he became increasingly reclusive living alone. He wasn’t as long-lasting as his mother and checked out at the relatively young age of 68. 

Arnold Varga 1926 - 1994

You can view a short video on Varga's work presented by Rick Landesburg at an AIGA event in Pittsburg a few years ago. Click here.

Brevity branding

At one of my regular breakfasts with Michael Wolff where we discuss life, love and loss and in the process laugh uncontrollably, he handed me this…

 “What do you think of that?” he said.

“Er, well, it looks like a mass-produced knife from the 1930s. We had a set just like it at home in the 1950s,” I said.

“No,” said Michael. “Look again…”

I study the knife more carefully and there engraved at the top of the blade was this…

It was the silhouette of a bear with the words ‘IN MIND’ below it that Michael had seen and been delighted by. 

“Why does no one in the industry have that kind of wit anymore?” lamented Michael.

It got me thinking about the topic. Back in the ’70s, I produced this book on the early advertising of the A & F Pears soap company…

In 1862, the man running and co-owning the company was Thomas J. Barrett: a brilliant marketing man who began to turn the fortunes of the ailing company through a range of audacious stunts. He imported a quarter of a million French ten-centime pieces (accepted in lieu of a penny in Britain), had the name ‘Pears’ stamped on every one of them and put the coins into circulation.

Years later, he bought a painting by Sir John Everett Millais entitled A Child’s World for £2,200. It featured a curly headed boy with a bowl of soapsuds and holding a clay bubble pipe. Barrett saw the potential of the painting immediately and approached Millais to allow him to add a bar of Pears soap in the bottom right-hand corner and to rename the painting Bubbles.

After some persuasion, Millais agreed and Barrett embarked on £30,000 advertising campaign to great success. The Bubbles painting was sold as a high-quality stone lithograph print along with postcards and was also used in magazine advertisements. Barrett was a great collector of British art. Another of his purchases, Sir Edwin Landseer’s Monarch of the Glen...

It gave Barrett the idea of suggesting it as a symbol for the distillers John Dewar and Sons, with whom he had a connection.

Wit, visual metaphors and rebus were a common sight in advertising from the 18th century until the mid-1950s, when the gradual adoption of modernism / international Swiss style eradicated this kind of realistic symbolism in favour of a stripped-back, clinical essence to design, which was far more meaningful to other designers engaged in the new order than to the general public.

It was the beginning of designers designing for other designers: something that has never gone away and has spawned award schemes around the world for much peer adulation and backslapping.

I am in no way decrying this sort of work or the award schemes: I have supported and added to it more than I care to mention. But since the general blanket introduction of the modernist principles to design, one rarely sees charm, humour or work that simply delights like that produced by the many unsung and often anonymous commercial artists who produced huge amounts of wonderful, witty and delightful work for all to enjoy. Here is a little to whet your appetite…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Compare the above with this group…

  

Did you smile? Point made.

Lastly here are a few brand marks art directed by Michael Wolff which hark back to wittier times...

 

This goldfish, photographed by Tony Evans was created for Michael Wolff's early company the Consortium.

A humming bird to represent home builder Bovis

For the investment company 3 i
 

A fox for Hadfields Paint

And an energetic grasshopper for Michael Wolff & Co with the slogan ' Leap before you look'. 

 

Branding was originally a term used for identifying the owner of livestock via a mark burnt onto cattle using a red-hot iron.

 

Ironically back in the 19 century, and still today, the symbols used are as simple as the modernist ones featured above.

 

Nothing is ever completely new in the world of design.

For more about Michael click here.

 

George Lois: New York Chutzpah

 

The man who created some of the most memorable and highly original Esquire covers also produced some of the most punchy brand logos that could only have emanated from New York.

No-nonsense, Bronx-born George Lois of Greek heritage was just as at home with graphics as he was with advertising, directing commercials, writing pithy copy and designing packaging.

Described as the original enfant terrible of Madison Avenue, he was never backwards about speaking his mind. At his peak, he operated in the intense jungle of New York’s advertising world amidst its mouthy taxi drivers, sweltering summers and harsh winters. It was a boiler house where those who shouted the loudest were heard. In the 1960s and ’70s, one of the loudest voices was George Lois, whose signature was on magazine covers, TV commercials, packaging, branding, copywriting and advertising. His iconic covers for Esquire magazine, which he produced for a decade, are still held up as masterpieces in conceptual design, making covers on the newsstands today look feeble and bland.

 

 

 

Lois believed in working in harmonious surroundings: both his office and home were immaculate, with a sense of order and calm that allowed him a backdrop from which to take flight wherever his creativity took him. He once said of untidy spaces: ‘The world is made up of people who insist that they want to exist in a “lived- in” atmosphere. I say it’s a rationalisation for being a slob’.

 

Lois in his 37^th floor office at Papert Koenig Lois  in downtown Manhattan in the 1970s. 

 

 Lois’s Greenwich Village apartments (he had two knocked through), with 50-foot wide living room.

 There are few pioneers left like Lois, who carved out a very personal stamp in the creative jungle. Today, collaboration is king, and the auteur is a reality.

 

The content of content

West Jet is a Canadian low-cost airline. And I give them no merits whatsoever for their graphics or brand identity – it is dire, as is most of their competition. 

No, I am not praising them for that. What I do like about them is the way they are creating awareness for the company. You’ll find none of the predictable, super-slick, over-the-top airline advertising here. They root themselves firmly in real stories.

In November last year, they launched a series of films entitled Above & Beyond, celebrating Canadians who go ‘above and beyond’ the call of duty in their daily lives. West Jet says they are doing this because “the people that make a difference never ask for anything in return. They do it for no other reason than that’s who they are. And they inspire all those around them, including us.” That is great.

And the more I read about the company, the more I like the sound of them. Twice a year, they share a portion of their profits with staff and seem to have a great dialogue with their customers, who write nice stuff about them. When have you ever heard that about Ryanair?

The Above & Beyond films are beautifully made and run for about three to six minutes each. And the interesting thing is, you won’t see them on expensive TV commercial slots but on their own website or uploaded to YouTube, where they have found a big audience and get direct feedback from those viewers. Some of these little gems have got up to five million hits.

This kind of promotional film-making is known as ‘content’ in the advertising world and often rather sneered at by the more sort-after directors who want to make their mark in the world of TV commercials – a little like feature film directors who used to feel the same about TV drama. But, as we know, all that has changed. Even Woody Allen is now directing a TV series.

Slowly, things are changing – there are now far more people surfing the internet than those sitting loyally in front of TV sets watching the ad breaks. And, frankly, these days you have to look really hard to find an original commercial. Most are shouty, gaudy and downright insulting. But the world of ‘content’ is becoming far more interesting. It is a longer form for the director, giving time and space to tell a story with more freedom and less obvious selling. I am sold.

Here is a recent Above & Beyond film that I guarantee will touch you.