Vintage. I love it. I have always collected pictures of pin-ups, old coke-a-cola bottles and especially fashion advertisements (instead of stalking people on Facebook, I look these things up on Google and stride through antique shops when bored!). But when I saw this advertisement, which I believe is from the 1920s, I almost screamed, "ahhh!"
Now, yes the girl looks frightening as the designer clearly forgot to include some eyeballs, but look at this type. Does anyone else think the "her" looks more like "ber." I think a lot of people make the mistake of thinking the cursive fonts look more elegant and rich. When in reality, you can barely even read them.
Like Lupton mentions in "Thinking with Type," printers created type to mean something- they made it to represent the movement of a body, they strived to create texture and fluid lines. This is one thing I pay attention to when looking at anything vintage. Sure, we are much more advanced this age, but at times things seem too technical- we lack passion. Well this ad shows that we have in fact improved with time. Or maybe because it is an advertisement for women, the "madmen" didn't put as much money into this particular piece. Whatever the case may be, I believe this would improve if there was an actual photograph of both the woman and the bottle. But with the type, well it is all wrong. In order for the heading to work, I would add movement to the words by italicizing (scala italic) or maybe even make the letters all caps similar to the letters in the title on "Vogue" magazine. And did you know that there was white typing above the "Guerlain" name? I didn't!! until I was examining this piece. I would make the words more of a warm color (maybe to match her lipstick) and use the yellow to shine behind the product- also using it in the name to draw the eyes to both vital pieces of information. Most importantly, I would make sure that all text in my ad is readable!!
So yes, this may catch someone's attention because it is kind of scary looking (and I am guessing this person knew what "warm colors" are but in my opinion that red and yellow is a bit overdone- supposed to draw attention to the main product, not to swallow the entire ad!). But all in all, it is a disappointment. I would not want to buy this product and I wouldn't even be able to identify it as the bottle looks like any other perfume bottle and although the name is in the right spot, I am simply turned off (almost disturbed) by the rest of it, to even notice.
- Yekaterina (Katya) Grishchenko
Great post, Katya!
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