Last Spring I went to a private estate sale, private in the sense it was run by the family and not a professional estate sale company. The house was pretty run down and I wasn't finding anything of interest until I came across a huge, flat cardboard box full of papers. Looking through them, I found catalogs of old newspaper advertising templates. These would have been used by companies looking to advertise in the newspaper and would have provided text and graphics which could be clipped and customized to fit their company, the origin of the term "clip art". As evidenced by many of my blog posts, I'm a fan of vintage advertising, so this was right up my alley. The owner originally wanted $20 for the box, but I talked them down to $10.
The catalogs were produced by Metro Associated Services (some of the original "Mad Men" of Madison Avenue) and spanned all seasons and three decades: the 1960's to the 80's. The company is still in business.
The catalogs measure 18" x 24", so it made scanning a bit unwieldy, but I did my best. The stitching software I have also had issues putting some pages together due to repeating patterns, so I couldn't digitally reassemble all pages. I'll be posting samples by season throughout the coming year. Today's ads date from 1964 and '65 and feature lots of mid century fonts and images. Enjoy!
