ONCE there was a time when you could make advertisements for cigarettes like this one from Lucky Strike. The brand for real man. The copy reads  ‘A man’s world. A thousand horsepower goes to sea. 50-60-70 knots. Strong hands on the wheel fight the kick of the waves. In a man’s world, a man’s cigarette. For man-size flavor, man-size satisfaction – Lucky Strike.’  For this kind of ads nowadays I guess you have to go to Russia.

THE evolution of spectacles went in an orderly fashion. It started with a frame for one lens. After a while the two-lens variant appeared. The fittest for survival are now the three lens eyeglasses. The first two Cyclopes are advertisements made for the magazine Zoom. Roman Cieslewicz from the agency Mafia designed the ads in the early seventies. Pieter Brattinga made the poster for an exhibition for the Japanese artist Shinkichi Tajiri. The last image is a repost of work from Koji Iwagami.

THEY say that crisis brings out the best in people. That was certainly true during the hyperinflation that hit in Germany in the early twentieth century. The rates dropped so fast new money had to printed all the time. Sometimes the federal bank couldn’t keep up. In response, towns and companies started making their own money to pay to workers and residents. In 1918 painter and graphic artist Wenzel Hablik designed these emergency banknotes for the city of  Kreis Steinburg. The typography reminds me a bit of the psychedelic posters of Wes Wilson. Check out more notes Wenzel Hablik here. They belong to an immense collection of emergency money.

OLIVETTI sure knew how to hire talent. Giovanni Pintori made some nice work, but this time it’s an advertisement from Enzo Mari. The Italian designer had a wide horizon. He illustrated children’s books, but also designed furniture and puzzles. It is said he once spent one year thinking how to create the perfect ashtray (He smoked two packs a day). The pattern of the ad looks a bit like when you repetitively hit one key on a typewriter. The poster measured 139 by 23 centimeters and was printed in the late sixties.

FEW people know that when Caesar crossed the river Rubicon he was backed up by a F-16 squadron. He just didn’t inform the Senate, that’s why it was forgotten by history. This page was part of brochure to promote paper from the company Zanders Feinpapiere. The design studio Graphic Team made the paper promotion in the late sixties.

BALI and Hawaii are both prime surf destinations. Countless perfect waves have broken on the shores of the two islands. But in 1972, when these posters for Pan American World Airlines were printed, Bali was only known to handful of surfers for its supreme conditions. The advertisements are the work of graphic design firm Chermayeff & Geismar.

THE person who made the layout for these first pages of the Penrose Annual Volume 19 from 1966 was not afraid to use white space. The Penrose Annual was a London-based review of graphic arts published by Lund Humphries. The annual wrote about the artistic aspects of design but also on the technical aspects of printing. The last Penrose Annual hit the shelves in 1982. See more pages from volume 19 here.

SALESMEN sell with their smiles. Also body language, like making a peace sign or giving the thumbs up, can be used to win the trust of a potential client. These two characters use both. Their work is to promote office automation equipment for the Japanese company Fujitsu. The drawings were made in 1985 in Tokyo by graphic designer Takao Yoguchi.

PLASTIC fabrics with the red, white and blue colors are used all around the world for shopping bags, parasols and to shield of construction sites. One day in Hong Kong it caught the eye of graphic designer Stanley Wong aka anothermountainman. He started taking photographs of the places where he found the durable fabric and called the series here/there/everywhere. The designer also saw a whole range of other products that could be made from it. This resulted in posters, books and even Victorian couches. Wong called the project redwhiteblue.

NICE advertisement from Italy. Graphic designer Franco Ricci created this ad in the late sixties for kitchen units for the company SCIC. Although that speaks for it self. The name of the kitchen seller is mentioned at least twenty times. I guess Ricci took some inspiration from a trip to London, judging the boarding pass and the image of a black cab.