Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog

I’m such a book junkie.

There’s a new one out for all you kitsch-mavens, advertising art gurus, and mid-20th-century style hounds. Warren Dotz and designer Masud Husain have just released Ad Boy: Vintage Advertising With Character, a compendium of cool brand identities culled from what must be a spectacular collection of ephemera. Although it is a followup to his previous book Meet Mr. Product: The Art of the Advertising Character, Warren says this one is quite different. Although I haven’t yet got my hands on a real live copy, there is a preview available on Amazon. The table of contents shows the book is arranged by subject matter: Mechanical Men, Scottish Plaid, Genies, etc.

I asked Warren if he had information on the creators of all these mascots, but he said it’s so hard to trace that he doubts if he has even 10% of the designers’ names. If any of you old retired illustrators and designers are the culprits and you read this blog – gee, a lot of us advertising and illustration historians would sure like to know who did what and when!