Obsessions

Winsor McCay Illustrates Temperance — or Prohibition?, 1929

While strolling through a used-books store in Los Angeles over 20 years ago, I spied the dust-jacketed binding of a book with a familiar illustration style. Much to my delight, I’d found a little-known 1929 first edition volume published by …

Fight Talk: A WWII Poster Campaign

The Second World War saw the participation of countless corporations steering and converting their talents and resources toward the war effort. At the end of the war, many of these corporations took advantage of their contributions to produce promotional pieces …

Litho-Mania: Marketing with Lithography, Circa 1939

My last post concerned the photoengraving industry of the pre-Depression period. This week it’s pre-WWII lithography! Litho Media: A Demonstration of the Selling Power of Lithography, published in 1939 by Roger Stephens and edited by H. Homer Buckelmueller and Colin …

The Bottle's the Thing: The Branding Evolution of Soda Pop

My fascination with brand design started with the soda-pop realm. I’d always loved leafing through old magazines and usually paid more attention to the advertising in them than the articles. Because my father had a collection of Life magazines beginning …

Clutter My World

I wish I’d come up with “Clutter My World,” but I stole the line from Laura Levine. That Laura is one smartypants—rock photographer, illustrator, filmmaker, and owner of the business I’d most like to work for—Homer and Langley’s Mystery Spot, …

A Fanzine Editor's 60-Year Love Affair with 1950s Comics

There’s this comic-book story about space aliens who try to save our planet from self-annihilation. But they arrive too late: We’d already destroyed ourselves in an atomic war. They land their rocket ship on a chunk of a devastated earth …

Vintage Orange Crush Soda Bottles Take a Ribbing

I grew up drinking Orange Crush and hearing my mom tell stories of how it used to come in brown bottles, supposedly to protect the flavor. But by the time I was a kid, those days were long gone, and …