SOME ADVERTISING PICTURES PRINT WELL--OTHERS DO NOT. WHY? IT'S ALL A
MATTER OF GOING ABOUT IT IN A KNOW-HOW WAY
_By J. LIVINGSTON LARNED_
An advertiser--perhaps one of the largest users of newspaper space in
the country--sprang a surprise recently on his ad-manager. Into the
office he came, one day, grim-visaged, jaw set, fire in his eyes, and
armed with no less than fifty clippings from exchanges.
And on the amazed ad-manager's desk he placed two conglomerate piles
of advertising matter. One represented the national newspaper campaign
of his own industry; the other a collection of newspaper
advertisements, picked at random.
"I think I have conclusive proof," said he, in no mild mood, "that you
fellows are not as efficient as you might be. Here are our
advertisements--from papers everywhere. The illustrations print
abominably! Look at them. The matter has been called to my attention
many times--by the newspapers themselves, by our road representatives
and by local dealers. They say our electro service and our straight
national campaigns are all muddied up with pictures that nobody can
decipher. Here's conclusive proof of it. Not a clean-looking cut in
the series and you can't blame it on paper and press work and all
that--they're _all_ bad!"
The advertising manager glanced casually at the exhibits. The
criticism was valid. Here was a daily newspaper campaign, running into
space valued at approximately sixty thousand dollars, and the
displays, three-fourths illustration, were mussy, involved, smeared
up, and unsatisfactory from a reproductive standpoint. Solid black
backgrounds were a sickly, washed-out gray and in other places
intricate pen work had "run-together."
It was equally true that clippings of competitive advertising and
advertising in general, selected at random, were strangely clean-cut.
The comparison was startling.
"Mr. X," finally observed the ad-manager, "I see what you mean; all of
us in this department have known of it, kept track of it; and the
remarkable part of the entire situation is that these results can be
traced back to you and your personal insistence on a certain type of
pen and ink design, executed in a specific technique. These matters
came up for your supervision and O. K. You did not care for the bold,
simple outline drawings first submitted. You preferred too many, and a
glut of detail. All of which is not compatible with newspaper
printing, even in large space. We were afraid of this and said so at
the time. Our objection was overruled. It's one thing to prefer a
pleasing, perhaps highly artistic pen technique and quite another to
apply it to fast presses, poor ink and hurried make-ready. A great
many things can happen, and _do_ happen, to a newspaper design before
it is printed and in the readers' hands."