Footnote in history department: When the Robert L. Stillson Company a master printing firm headquartered in New York’s Printing Crafts Building launched their own art department, they went all-out to introduce Ernest C. Riedel, former art director of Good Housekeeping and Red Cross magazines, as well as newspaper man and copywriter, as its esteemed leader.
In the journal Postage and the Mailbag, however, the booklet is critiqued this way: “If you would care to see the highest type of booklet [and it it beautifully produced] spoiled by the injection of cheap and moth-eaten humor, write to the Robert L. Stillson Company, 461 Eighth Avenue … The greater part of the selling talk is well written and dignified, but its power is wasted.” Now, them’s fighting words.
