The Rise of American Editorial and Advertising Design: Part 2

Charles Parsons was appointed art director of Harper and Brothers in 1863. He assisted in raising the standard of pictorial images in the company’s publications as he had an outstanding eye for young talent. Charles Dana Gibson was not brought on board because he shared a name with the art director. Actually, his images of young women and square-jawed man established a principle of physical beauty in the mass media that endures for decades. Fletcher Harper passed away in 1877. The magazine’s reigns were taken over by a more conservative editorial staff.

Charlse Dana Gibson, poster for Scribner's, 1895. Although the exquisite
beauty of the "Gibson Girl" was captured with facility and control, Gibson
was unconcerned with the design type and image as a cohesive whole.
In this poster the printer added text in incompatible typefaces.

Charlse Dana Gibson, his wife Irene Langhorne, 1909.
His wife and her sister, Nancy Astor, served as the
 inspiration for the famous Gibson Girls.

 Howard Pyle was one of the many artists Parsons approached, but Pyle had the broadest influence of them all. He was the major force behind the launch of the period called the Golden Age of American Illustration that lasted from the 1890s to the 1940s. Illustrators mainly dominated this period. Publications chose only those illustrators whose work overshadowed the conventional typographic format. In advertising layouts, room was indicated for type. Not the other way around.

The meticulous research, elaborate staging and historical accuracy of Pyle’s work infinitely inspired the generation of young graphic artists to maintain the traditional realism in American art. The impact photography had on graphic illustration was evident in Pyle’s career as it evolved with the new reproduction technologies. He received his first commission for a tonal illustration in 1887.

Howard Pyle, illustration from The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood,1883. 

Pyle sought authenticity in every detail of setting, props, costume, and characterization.

 The newly invented halftone process enabled the conversion of the blacks, whites and grays in Pyle’s oil and gouache paintings into minute dots that were blended together by the human eye to form continuous tone. Not only did this new process have an impact on the jobs of engravers, but artists were forced to either switch from pen-and-ink art to tonal, painted illustrations or face the doomed future of their market.

In 1893 Pyle achieved another advance when he created his first two-color illustration, which was printed form two halftone plates. The one plate was used for black and the other, separating the reds from the blacks and grays, was inked with red. He only got a chance to apply his superb sense of color to a full-color illustration assignment in1897. This image was printed with a four-color printing process that was still in its developing stages.

Century magazine (1881-1930) and Scribner’s Monthly (1887-1939) posed as Harper’s Weekly’sbiggest competition. The Theodore Low De Vinne printing firm printed all three of these periodicals. De Vinne and his staff created a quiet, dignified, but rather dry layout for all three. The Century showcased text that was set in two columns of 10-point type, wood engravings that were dropped next to the appropriate paragraphs and article headings that were merely set in a 12-point capitalized type and centered above the initial page of an article. De Vinne wasn’t satisfied with the thin nature of the types initially used in this magazine. To solve this problem he commissioned type designer, Linn Boyd Benton, to cut a blacker, more readable, typeface that was slightly extended and had thicker thin strokes and short slab serifs. Today, this typeface is known as Century. It’s still in use worldwide; especially in children’s books.

The rising tide of literacy, plunging production costs and the growth of advertising revenues increased the number of magazine and newspaper publications in the USA from 800 to 5000 between the years of 1830 and 1860. Magazines were extensively used for advertising by 1870. As magazines grew, so did advertising agencies.  And in 1841 Volney Palmer, from Philadelphia, launched the first advertising agency. This agency served as a consulting firm and possessed many specialized skills. It was also pioneered by a second agency called N.W. Ayer and Son.

In the 1880s Ayer provided services clients were not equipped to perform and other publishers did not offer, such as copywriting. By the end of the century Ayer was well on his way to being able to offer a complete spectrum of services, such as

• Copywriting
• Art direction
• Production
• Media selection

Many of the principles regarding persuasive selling were developed during the 1880s and 1890s, and applied in some English and American magazines. By the end of the century many magazines, including Cosmopolitan and McClure’s, were carrying over a 100 pages of advertisements in each monthly issue. An engraved illustration with type was often perched below or above these advertisements.

The Pictorial Printing Company of Chicago launched a new graphic format on 20 June 1877 with their first issue of The Nickel Library. These nickel novels or story papers had action-filled covers interpreting tales of the Civil War and the Western frontier. The typical format consisted of 16-32 pages set in 2-4 columns of type. The size of the pages, 20.3 cm by 30.5 cm, allowed artists to create pictures that made a strong visual impact when placed amongst other magazines on newsstands.