There used to be a blog or website dedicated to American advertising. I think it was called ‘Ephemera’ or something along those lines. It was an enormous library, extremely well curated and I think it could be searched by year, by product etc
It featured futuristic advertising from American Steel manufacturers and Dupont and General Electric etc., and it had ads for American cars and rail lines and general industry from the late '40s to the mid '60s all rendered in this idealised futuristic Mad Men aesthetic.
I’d finish working in the evening and go to this website for a few minutes of dopamine hits and suddenly it would be midnight. I was completely addicted to the stuff.
There is one image jammed in my brain. It featured a large city street, devoid of traffic and a man with a suit, briefcase and hat about to get into his enormous, absolutely and entirely impractically enormous, black and chrome batwing automobile and drive home for the evening on those wide, empty of traffic streets.
That image filled me with longing. I kept returning to it, wishing I could climb into that world.
It’s all a bit odd, cos I’m generally immune to actual advertising. But anything futuristic will suck me in.
Seems to be some overlap in what boingboing calls terrible covers and what it calls amazing covers, but whatever. These things are subjective.
I have noticed that although the Gaean Enchantment cover is awful, the model for it is till famous, especially in the Philly area. Here he is with his shirt off.
Plan is to use books to damaged to be saved (or put into the little free library) to make a giant mosaic of cheesy sci fi art. Late 70’s and early 80’s tends to be the best.
Retro-future stuff is hysterical/bizarre/silly/superb, and much more rarely accurate. I’m exceptionally fond of the retro-future car and similar transport art, and many of the '50s - early '60s futuristic concept cars:
like this '61 Ford thingy.
