Isolette - It’s folded!It has an exceptionally fine f/4.5 Anastlgmal lens. Optical direct vision finder. Very easy loading -simply place the film on two sprockets, wind on, and the film automatically moves on, the exacl amount for each exposure, and winds itself into the empty spool-holder.On the pressure of a button the camera springs into action fully extended. Accidental anddouble exposures impossible.

Agfa Isolette pictures are clear and sparkling, with perfect definition, and good depth of focus. Takes the same size film as the Leica, Contax, Exakla, etc. and many of the acces-sories-enlargers, tripods, etc., used with these cameras, can be used with the Agfa Karat. Enlargements 3½ x 2½ are 2’· dozen. Strip prints 2’6 for 36 or film positives 5’· for 36. The Agfa Isolette is too good to miss.

Where you are, when you are!

CAMERASAGFA

• This beautifully compact AgfaIsolette takes twelve 2 ¹/₄ x 2 ¹/₄ pictures! Here are its All-American features!1. Brilliant, eye level view finder.2. Highly corrected f4.5 anastigmat lens.3. Precision shutter speeds of ¹/₂ to ¹/₂₅₀th of 1 second, Time and Bulb.4. Focuses 3 ¹/₂ ft, to infinity. Focus-ing ring in lens mount.5. Built-in sshutter release on camer-atop. Your dealer will let you see and handle this fine camera. Ask him! MADE IN U. S. A.

MANDATORY ASSIGNMENT 05 – ILLUSTRATION/PHOTO

INTRODUCTION

INTERPRETATION OF THE TASK

The assignment this time was to design a magazin advert inspired by a spesific style or era We were to find a product/object from before 1970, shoot the product and make an illustration as well, and finally combine this in the advert. The style of the ad should be inspired by the visual effects of the era of the product.

STRATEGIC DESIGN

The product I chose - or rather ended up with - was an Agfa Isolette camera which I found at my grandmothers house. It used to be my dads. The exact age of the product is very hard to say because many similar models were made with only small variations in shutter and glass. After extensive studying on the inter-net I know that the camera is definetely post war, and probably from the early fifties. So with this as my basis I chose to imitate the advertising style of the early fifties, and more spesificly early fifties in the USA.

I am aware that Agfa is europeean, but the definetely manufactured and adver-tised cameras in the USA. (As I now live in Brazil and this is were the camera was found I am not sure if the camera could actually also have been produced in Brasil, but finding any material from that era in Brasil would be very hard. The 50s advertising in the USA though is very well documented.)

RESEARCH AND WORK PROCESS

CREATIVE METHODS AND INSPIRATION METHODS

I actually started doing some research before I had chosen my product this time.I allready knew that the product needed to be from before 1970. Last year I had an extensive victorian inspired period so I was kind of tired of that, and photos were not used much in ads in that era. Last weeks learnig activity I ended up doing an pictorial modernism ad from the time of the world wars. I felt it would be almost cheating (as well as repetetive) doing an ad from the same era now, so that left me with the fifties and sixties - the so called Golden Age of Advertising. Very fitting.

I actually have not seen Mad Men, but I think I will now. Mad Men came up a lot in my search for advertising in the fifties and sixties and probably made it a lot easyer to find articles about the subject.

I started by searching for books on the subject on amazon. That ended up beeing almost a dead end. There were a lot of books that seemed very promising, but none in ebook version (I obviously wouldnt have the the time to wait for an amazon book to arrive in the mailbox). Some of them seemed so interesting as I actually think I will order them anyway. The books I found were 20th Century Advertising by Dave Saunders and Soap, Sex, and Cigarettes -A Cultural History of American Advertising by Juliann Sivulka. The former was organized by product category rather than era and was not too helpful, but the latter was very interresting, allthough it was only in black and white. I also did some readig in my goto book of the last months: Meggs’ History of Graphic Design by Philip B. Meggs. As always a major part of the research was done on Alphabets search engine (Hint: Its not AltaVista).

After I had finally found my product and defined the early fifties as my era I nar-rowed my research to this period and ideas started to spin. Whith a couple of ideas in mind I started analog sketching and came up with a couple of new ideas in the prosess as well. My chose era was full of very pictorial almost photolike graphics. There were obviously some seriously good painters at work at the time so had had to do a couple of rounds with myself to discover how I could be able to imitate this.

I started by searching composit parts that I needed, photos or illustrations. I then traced an outline in of each part of the objects in Photoshop. When I had traces an object I started coloring each part. For the coloring I sampled a shadow, a midtone and a bright color as well as near white for highlights. Most of my base object were black and white so I had to sample from similar color photos. I used my 50op 5flow brush from my retouching days for the coloring to get somewhat smooth transitions. I should probaly have used softlight layers as well for better

mixing but I have become a bit rusty on photoshop after a lot of work in Illustra-tor lately. The normal blend gave me a more painterly look so it wasn’t all bad anyway. I tried to keep the different levels on different layers. When I had fin-ished coloring an object I made a merge on top and sometimes also duplicated this and put the dup on multiply or color burn to add some more fill and color.Finally I used the outline as basis for a selection before removing it. I then used the selection to duplicate the obbject alone to a transparent layer. All objects where then put in the library for use in Indesign at the final stage.

I also did the product shoot. For the shoot I made a lightbox as described in last weeks lesson. I actually have made a similar one earlier. The problem now was that I only brought my Speedlight and a softbox for lighting when I moved to Brazil, so I covered the sides with white paper hoping for enough reflection. I used the textile from the softbox on the top. I also left my tripod behind in Norway so my camera settings were a bit set. ISO just has to be 100 to avoid noise. I used a 35mm glass (because it is noticably sharper than my 105mm) so I had to go pretty close. This meant that I needed a pretty narrow aperture. 8F seemed good on the camera but closer inspection in Camera Raw showed that 9f was more appropriate. My biggest problem was burned out highlights on the top of the camera (my object). The light falloff and the lack of a front light also made som hard shadows on the bottom. I tried to reduse the falloff by using the actual softbox on top of the lightbox getting some more distance, but I was still in lack of a frontlight. I started to get better results when I feathered the softbox over the front ( the softbox was bigger than the lightbox). When I finally added a continous light in front I got the results I wanted. I finally did some level work in photoshop as well as some retouching to make the camera look a little more new and clean.

The final stage was putting it all together in Indesign and finding the right fonts and sizes. I started with a 12 collumn grid but ended up with a 6 collumn grid. I have resently gained a fear of too few collumns and options, but the gutters became too small for this project and actually I didn’t need much more options sideways anyway this time. I started with my illustations and my camera shot and then filled with some placeholder text and placeholder fonts (meaning fonts in the same category as I wanted). Extensis Suitcase actually refused to open the first day I was working in indesign and I could feel a heartattack closing in with the fear of having to use sytem fonts only, but luckily a reinstall the following day fixed the problem.

ANALYZIS

For starters I will say that I wish we gould get the assignments in such advance that there would be time for the mailman to arrive with ordered books. When I lived in Elverum it was impossible to find good design books in the bookstore. One would think that it would be easy in Rio de Janeiro, but actually the best books are not translated and the originals are either hard to find or vey expen-cive. Its a good thing then that one company has made it possible to search all the information in the world, right from the comformity of your own home.

My era was the 50s. And more specificly 50s in USA. The 50s brought a lot of change. The war and depression was over. Wartime technology had brought new production methods, machines and materials. People were finally able to spend after long time of rationing. The goverment was also ready to hand out loans. Salaries raised highly and credit was given to anyone. Women had entered working life when the men were at war, and many had saved up some money (many women lost their jobs when the men returned, but the wheel had started spinning). People were ready to consume. No wonder the 50s, and especially the 60s has been called the golden age of advertising.

The 50s started as the 40s with a lot of pictorial lineart and illustrations, but the use of photos became more common during the years. The swiss had brought the grid and clean and objective design. Allthough there were lots of illustrating art in use, they usually had a motive, and the ornaments had gone. The ads were also clearly set with a grid. One of the first things I noticed was that there was a lot of body copy. So much small text, but nicely structured. Other noticable trends were:

• Very often red was used on some parts of the text, usually on a catchfrase or a product name.

• Handwritten fonts were also used a lot. Often in the same parts as the red.• Except for in the mandatory handwritten part, sans were often used in

headers. If sans were not used then there would probably be a Didot-like font (see Kodak commercials).

• Extensive body copy, most often in serif (but with exceptions).• Often a humoristic pun in the headlines. Clearly bragging was also still

common.• Commercials were often very sexistic by todays standard. Advertisers had

started segmenting customers, first by sex, later also by age.• Happiness in the peoples new suburbian enviroment was often portraied.• Underlining and exclamation mark were on a “the more the better” basis.

The 60s brought cleaner and more creative original commercials, and more use of photo. But that is a story for another time.

SKETCHES

Early Photoshop Layout

Photoshop Whit photots for color sample

Best Raws

Light Box Setup Final after retouch

MOODBOARDS

DESIGN

STYLE/GENRE50s advertising style, with pictorial illustration and carefully structured copy.For more detail see the analyzes section.

TYPOGRAPHY

For the handwritten font I used Signalist by Mika Melvas. A brushscript that is not to feminin for my ad and not too “happy christmas”, And it resembles many of the fonts I have seen in the 50s ads.

My header sans ended up being Franklin Gothic. An american grotesk made between 1903 and 1912 by Morris Fuller Benton. Widely used in advertising, even today.

For body copy I wanted serif from the era and started with Caslon, and saw no reason to change it. Could probably have used Baskerville as well, but the old typesetter rule of thumb was when in doubt, use Caslon. According to wikipe-dia caslon was also almost a genre itself in the USA in the beginning of the 20th century.

I used Caslon italic in the “sidebar”

COLOR

The Illustration is very colorfull as with paintings from the era. When putting all objects together I could see that Marilyn became slightli more bright and color-full. I could have tuned it down with a huesat layer, but I feel it is kind of fitting from the era calling attention to the female and famous object in the add.

The skirtlifting of Marylin may not have happened yet depending on the exact date of the camera, but that only gives some timetravelling irony. Like little was he to know that this dream of his was actually going to come true..

COMPOSITION, LAYOUT, GRID

Illustartion covering close to 1/2 of the add (very much used in the era). The rest layed out in 3 collumns divided in a 2 collumn main part and 1 collumn “sidebar”. Gutters with same size as margin. I wanted a big gutter between the sidebar and main part. After some testing I figured the same gutter was best between the collumns in the main bar as well. The main part and “sidebar” are clearly differentiated by their design anyway.

The top red catch and the lower headline cover overlapping 2/3. One can almost see a Z from the Top left of the catch throught the side of the man to the camera and then to the red headline, causing some tension and motion in the ad.

I started with the bacground not extending to the right of the man. When adding the crate on the white empty space four elements (bacground, marilyn, crate, man) created a very interesting almost 3d like effect. But it also created a white rectangel in my upper right. I am still in doubt but in the end I stretched the background to a more traditional fill, losing some of the 3d effect. The man is still line lower than the rest for depth effect.

SOURCES AND REFERENCES

BOOKS

20th Century Advertising by Dave Saunders Soap, Sex, and Cigarettes -A Cultural History of American Advertising by Juliann Sivulka. Meggs’ History of Graphic Design by Philip B. Meggs.

LINKS

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caslonhttp://www.pixel77.com/print-ad-designs-through-the-decades-the-60s/http://adage.com/article/adage-encyclopedia/history-1950s/98701/http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/photography-ads-1950shttp://www.vintageadbrowser.com/household-ads-1950s/15http://www.businessinsider.com/vintage-sexist-and-racist-ads-2011-6?op=1http://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/aug/07/real-mad-men-andrew-cracknellhttps://br.pinterest.com/ecrafty/50s-ads/https://www.google.com.br/search?q=50s+ads&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=uni-v&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjLq-G72rzKAhWEVh4KHR2tDnEQ7AkILQ&bi-w=956&bih=973https://www.google.com.br/search?q=50s+ads&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=uni-v&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjLq-G72rzKAhWEVh4KHR2tDnEQ7AkILQ&bi-w=956&bih=973#tbm=isch&q=50s+camera+adshttps://www.google.com.br/search?q=50s+ads&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=uni-v&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjLq-G72rzKAhWEVh4KHR2tDnEQ7AkILQ&bi-w=956&bih=973#tbm=isch&q=50s+agfa+adshttps://www.google.com.br/search?q=50s+ads&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=uni-v&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjLq-G72rzKAhWEVh4KHR2tDnEQ7AkILQ&bi-w=956&bih=973#tbm=isch&q=isolette+adswww.amazon.comwww.myfonts.com