SPRING CLEANING

Certainly not the time for that in most of the country....one of the coldest, iciest winters in recent history. In total contrast, California has had one of the warmest and driest Januarys ever recorded....mid day into the 60's and 70's. We seem to be fulfilling the title of an excellent book on irrigated California and Arizona called 'Cadillac Desert'. The cleaning we're referring to are some desktop scans of the old Chevron 'taxiboards' and billboards from the 50's. Here, of course, 'old' is a relative term....the CAWS is all about old! 'Modern' in my career would be in the 70's and 80's. Changing the subject, I'm enjoying Leif's series on comps this week....and next week the CAWS will show a few odd color comps from my checkered past.

First, the last three Chevron taxi boards....some of that series shown earlier.


Nothing here too memorable...


...and typical subjects from Chevron and BBD&O.


A Lucky Lager spring poster the next...


...and then a Bank of America vacation billboard.


A PG&E 24 sheet poster follows, 'Washday's a breeze'. This scan is from a small flyer that was mailed with bills. All done in gouache, of course.


A B&W photo of a PG&E billboard, done way back in '52, and my first PG&E poster. This came from one of my favorite art directors, Nick Carter, at BBD&O. We had a friendly dispute about the muted values on the wagon team. I maintained the historical difference was enough, especially for a billboard. Let's make the color and values more equal. He insisted on the faded, muted look....and, as usual, the art director nearly always wins! PG&E trucks back then were a dark brown....but the difference in values on the billboard were a little less strong than on the scan.


Think I'll add, for the second time, the scan of probably my favorite PG&E poster, our distressed little housewife in a teacup!


* Charlie Allen's Flickr set.