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Focusing the Pictorial Appeal

By HARTWELL MASON

HE day of the advertising illustration used simply to attract attention and not to drive home a selling argument is passing. The pretty girl whose face has been employed in the interests of every article of manufacture, from harvesting machinery to breakfast foods, is fast being relegated to the rear seats.

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is the watchword of advertising; the consumer shouts "Show Me"; and the advertiser must plunge right into the heart of his story regardless of preliminaries and elaborate stagesettings.

"Focus" should be the watchword of every man who plans or executes designs for commercial purposes. The gardener who prunes

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call your attention to is So-and-So's Safety Razor." Similarly the heading "Chatter About Cheese" ultimately turns out to be the opening of an appeal of the Texas-Gulf Realty Company. Greater competition, selling arguments, less revolutionary and more hair-splitting, buying public made keener by experience has brought about many changes in commercial designs as in the merchandising world as a whole. There is getting to be less and less time for the unnecessary, what is unessential, the smart, the frivolous. Nowadays "Brass Tacks"

your fruit trees focuses their strength along productive, resultful lines. Your lens

focuses which gathers in the sun's rays and concentrates them upon one spot until it bursts forth into flames. Your chemist who eliminates this impurity and that foreign element until he finally has a pure chemical element of great potentiality focuses.

The advertising illustration which does not persuade but simply attracts attention scatters its fire and does little good; the advertising illustration which focuses its appeal, by elim

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inating every element foreign to concentrated salesmanship, is like a sharpshooter who picks off the heads one after another in rapid succession.

To illustrate: A keen piano manufacturer was recently shown a commercial design which he had ordered. He gave it one, long, critical look. "It won't do," he said simply. "I'll grant it is beautifully drawn. The technique, the draughtmanship is nearer perfect than any design I have seen in a long time. But it scatters its fire. You have a family, home scene. At

the right is sister playing the piano and brother singing and father and mother listening. So far so good. That is one focus. But why in thunder did you put in the other sister writing a letter and the other brother reading a magazine 'way over there to the left? Their's is another focus, a foreign element. As far as they are concerned, there is no music in that room, no piano, and pianos are what I am selling. I'll take that picture and pay for it but I'll tell you what I'll do with it. I'll cut it right in half and only use the half at the right which has a concen

trated, penetrating commercial appeal."

This piano man was right. But few advertisers are as keen as he when it comes to planning and engineering commercial art work.

"Does this picture have more than one commercial focus? Is that focus the right one and is it as intimate as it can be made from a merchandising point of view?" These are questions which the critic of commercial art work would do well to apply to his designs when they are first presented to him. After he has satisfied himself these scores it is well enough to look to the technique.

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sake or anything of the sort but rather of art solely for the sake of sales, this is being appreciated more and more.

In an art gallery it is considered essential that a human body be drawn with a head, body, arms and legs as a rule. In a commercial illustration there need be and should not be any hesitancy about lopping off any part or parts of any person or persons provided the commercial end is better served. For fear the reader may not grasp on the moment what we mean, we would refer to the recent campaigns of the Winslow Skate

American Lady SHOES Company.

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This com

pany has not hesitated time and again to show simply the legs, from the knees down, of a man skating at extreme speed if only it has served to bring out the skates on that man larger and more clearly, nearer to the reader's eye, in short to focus the illustration commercially.

The advertising pages are offering more and more examples of this sort of lopping off unA half a

You will find the best styles-always-in the American Lady Shoe.
It is a matter of pride with the makers that all that is best in
styles-leather-workmanship-shall be found in the American essentials.
Lady Shoe.

They are determined that the advantage they possess as the
largest makers of shoes in the world shall show in the quality of
the American Lady Shoe,-and it does.

The shoe illustrated is the new
black velvet pump that is all
the rage this branch. Its grace-
ful lines and soft finish give it
a daintiness that is charming

man isn't of much use

in the world of flesh and blood, nor usually

No matter what style you want, there is an American in the world of art; but
Lady Shoe that will suit you, and fit you

Go to the dealer in your locality who sells the American
Lady Shoe. Select the style you like best, then find
your size and you will get the utmost in shoe satisfaction.

Send today for a free copy of our new Souvenir of Footwear Fashions

in the world of commercial art a half or a

quarter of a man can

HAMILTON, BROWN SHOE CO. St. Louis-Boston oftentimes prove a bet

The same principle is followed in the art of the stage manager. On the stage, too, the watchword is "Focus." There, too, unessentials always give way to essentials. Everything and everybody focuses upon the plot, the action, the argument. The use of "centerstage," the use of the spotlight, general lighting, scenery, orchestra, are all methods of helping the audience to appreciate the relative significance of people, things and happenings.

But focusing in commercial illustrations can be carried much further than the mere elimination of people unessential to the selling argu ment. And as the realization grows that commercial art is not a case of art for art's

ter salesman than a throng.

For instance, one of the most effective advertisements in a contemporaneous series being run in the interests of Meadow Gold Butter is illustrated with a design which simply shows two hands breaking a pound of butter irregularly into halves. The latter are so near the reader's eyes, as it seems, that the thing at once becomes very real. The appeal is intimate, immediate. One can imagine he smells the fresh, new, golden butter and at once is in a thoroughly favorable mood to read the persuasive text which follows below.

Similarly the only indispensable human element in a scene showing a tray of Welch Grape

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Juice and glasses being carried into a room are a woman's two hands and the illustration worked out on that basis not only saves space but is more intimate and immediately personal.

Sargent & Company simply show a hand inserting a key into the lock on a door. All but the man's hand is superfluous. Hamilton, Brown Shoe Company show a splendidly airbrushed pair of women's feet, fitted out with neat hose and still neater American Lady Pumps, with just the suggestion of a petticoat above, and what that is essential has then been omitted. The advertising of the Auto Strop Razor, LePage's Glue, Prince Albert Tobacco, and hosts of campaigns offer many other examples of a similar nature.

But, while often advisable, the lopping off of dispensable human anatomy and dispensable inanimate parts is not always necessary. Approximately the same intimate-appeal results have been obtained in many other ways, sometimes more advisable for various reasons.

The old, much overworked magnifying-glass has done valiant duty in the interests of commercial art focus. Today the Scott Paper Company is focusing the reader's attention by means of two magnifying glasses upon the fact that its toilet paper is smooth, whereas some other kinds are very rough.

The fabric of the Rub-Dry Towel has been clearly illustrated by means of the commercialized magnifying glass, as have also the

weaves or structure of innumerable other manufactured articles from silk to guaranteed roofings. Even methods of manufacture, as certain hand operations in the making of shoes, have been played up by the same means.

But one fine day somebody with a grain more of originality than the average awoke to the fact that the same results can be attained in other ways. The employment of the arrow should be mentioned as the foremost substitute for the mag

nifying glass. It is used to lead the eye from the article of manufacture, as it appears amid its environment and surroundings, to a smaller illustration in which the same article appears in highly magnified form. The latter may be a This cross section. was the case with a recent advertisement of the Yale Cylinder Night Latch. In this case the big illustration showed at one side a man standing by his office door and at the other side a woman standing by her home door, and two arrows directed the eye from the two locks in those doors to a sizable oval at the bottom of the advertisement where was a cross section of the lock showing the cylinder mechanism.

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But undoubtedly the most clever manner of commercially focusing an advertising design, where it is possible, consists not in employing a secondary and subsidiary design, showing the article when magnified, but rather in a little careful playing up of the article and a subduing of its natural surroundings about it.

One of the cleverest instances of focusing upon an automobile tire that the writer has ever seen, for instance, is here reproduced. Here the artist has been clever enough to play up the tire itself in strong blacks and whites. But the young man and young woman in the automobile have been skillfully "kept down" by the use of stipple, while the automobile body has been subordinated to a remarkable degree with well executed stipple of a different type.

A manufacturer of automobile jacks has played up his article even when only very small, shown in place under an automobile, the latter being drawn in "open" line lacking detail and the jack in solid black silhouette.

Or, taking the case of half-tones, focusing is much simpler. In such cases it is very largely up to the engraver to get the desired result by means of double-etching, that is eating down all the surface of the engraving to make it lower and thus print lighter except the part where the advertised article is, which will print heavier and darker in strong contrast.

This is what was done in the case of a commercial illustration for a Kryptok Lenses advertisement which has been widely complimented. A man's face was used and all of it was "double-etched" except the glasses on the nose, which, being re-enforced by a little discrete retouching, stood out strongly in contrast.

By a method exactly similar a Durham Duplex Razor and its case have been made to

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This latter method of focusing, as has been intimated, is not always available. It necessitates good art work and a generous allowance for carefully made engravings. But where it is available and is carefully executed, it has strong advantages which compel interest. It shows the article of manufacture amid its natural surroundings, yet is not lost amid them, but completely dominates them; and it obviates mechanical makeshifts, such as the magnifying glass is at best. Its value is going to be attested by its greater employment.

By Robert Frothingham, of Everybody's Magazine

Being Extracts from Mr. Frothingham's Address Before the Dallas Convention

N

O competition has such a strangle hold on a manufacturer as competition with his own jobbers; the jobbers who have established their own brands and private labels and won't let the manufacturer advertise his identity on pain of leaving him.

A thousand manufacturers have found a way to get across and advertise their own identity. The majority of our national advertisers did, and do still, distribute through jobbers. Out of their own minds they invented a means to lift themselves over the jobber's opposition. That was nerve and advertising.

Speaking about brave and successful advertisers, Mr. Frothingham said:

"The chief difference between those men and many thousands of might-have-beens was that these men saw big and figured big. They viscalized millions, unnumbered millions, of future customers who were only waiting to know what they had to sell. The might-have-beens visual· ized only about as many customers as they could count-and without getting very tired at that. As a man thinketh in his heart so is he.' If he thinks big he acts big, and he wins big. "Yes-it takes courage for an advertiser to realize that advertising is first of all a reputation builder, a creator of prestige. Second, that he can sell a well-established trade mark for infinitely more money than it cost him in advertising to establish. And third, that it takes time to accomplish these things; sometimes it takes years. It is his failure to grasp these vital facts which so frequently leads him to stop advertising when he is just on the eve of assured success. Just that lack of nerve, at a time when it would accomplish more than at any other period of his experience, is responsible for more failures in advertising than most of us realize.

"But when the advertiser gets that great comforting and sustaining principle fully estab lished in his mind, he realizes that success depends upon his keeping up his advertisingthat an investment in the sure results of human rature will keep him going when other invest

ments fail. For it is all on deposit in the bank cf a million brains, and its accumulations will come back to him with splendid sureness when he has learned how to keep his courage.

"But the frost that bites most advertising fcet is the alarm of hard times. The man who stops his advertising for this excuse never was & genuine advertiser. He was only an amateur, a dilettante, who had only played at it when it was easier than not. Real advertising as an investment in the sure results of human nature, had never gotten into his blood."

He gave, as an illustration of what happens at the signal of money tightness, this case: Four clothing manufacturers are, for illustration, doing each a business of a million dollars a year. "Congress tinkers with the tariffWall street howls-some banks fail-collections are slow-business gets morbid." Three of the clothiers, who figure advertising as an expense, cut it out. The fourth keeps his going, and instead of his trade dropping, as that of the other three does, ne picks up a handsome part of that business they lose. "That fourth advertiser, whatever the line of his goods, is the man who gives all the stability to advertising business. The fourth man always gets the big end of the results.

"And a courageous advertiser makes a fierce competitor for a man of less nerve than he. His courage keeps him awake to every opportunity. He never rests on his oars. He is watching his product all the time and bettering it in every possible way. He keeps his sales force in close co-operation with his advertising. He puts up his money with a smile because he has learned the secret that the public will stay by him if he keeps up the quality of his goods and keeps on telling them about it.

"The real advertiser has always been and he always will be-the man who does not belittle the hazards of investing money in something he can not see, hear, or handle; who does not blind himself to the dangers of the chances which lie between him and the bigger Opportunity that beckons him. But he is the man

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