Ace Jet 170

Pintorinterest

 

What was I doing last August? The one in 2017. Whatever it was it must have been all-consuming because I completely missed the publication of Moleskine's Giovanni Pintori monograph. Actually, that Moleskine published anything was news to me!

Pintori and Olivetti are, as you may know, bound together as tightly as the pages of this monograph. In the days when the typewriter was king, Olivetti was the Commander in Chief and Pintori was its…erm…Field Marshal. Armed with an ammunition box full of colours and shapes (and typewriters) the Lance Corporal Designer General would charge into battle, decimating lesser typewriter regiments with a frenzied volley of sub-machine artwork.

It would be fair to say that Pintori is the man that set the standard for the company's marketing activity, raising it head and shoulders above its competitors and visualising Adriano Olivetti's product vision. Pintori left the company in 1967, a few years after the death of the man, although continued to work for Olivetti on a freelance basis while growing his own independent practice.

The monograph brings together many of Olivetti's iconic ads along with original artwork and sketches then other commissions the designer carried out after leaving Olivetti.

If you're not so familiar with Pintori's work then a quick PinterSearch will yield much delicious fruit.

Monster Shit Sale

Sometime during the mid-sixties the American trade paper Printers' Ink asked ad man Howard Luck Gossage for the ad he'd "never forget". He explained that it was a full page he'd seen around 1925, for a haberdashers. It had a massive woodtype headline that read "MONSTER SHIRT SALE", only they'd missed an "R" out.

It wasn't what they were expecting. It was, however, very Gossage.

A few weeks ago I was in Birmingham, having lunch with friend from the internet, copywriter Johnny Cullan. We talked about all sorts of stuff but came around to our shared hero Drayton Bird. A singularly uncool character in the marketing industry he was (is) a man totally focussed on getting results. I've learned a lot from Bird, although he doesn't know it. The line of chat lead Johnny on to introduce me to Howard Luck Gossage and, more specifically, Steve Harrison's book on the man that was published last year.

It's understating it to say that Gossage was an unconventional adman and to get his full measure you'd be much better off getting yourself a copy of Harrison's book than rely on any attempt I might make to talk him up.

I'll say this though: Gossage was also a man that wanted results; direct results. He came to feel that the mechanisms of his business would be much better employed for the greater good and during his life he showed how that should be done. He got some amazing results.

To summarise some of his most significant achievements, Gossage: saved the Grand Canyon from likely destruction; kick-started the Green Movement (i.e. Friends of the Earth); launched Marshall McLuhan onto an international stage; and inspired Tom Wolfe. John Steinbeck worked for him for heaven's sake! He used interactivity and "social media" practically forty years before the internet existed; and he pioneered the cybernetic technique of the information loop decades before the term "iteration" was adopted by the web community.

There I go, talking him up. But really, Gossage was that important.

Steve Harrison's perfectly titled book, Changing the world is the only fit work for a grown man, captures the radical energy of this lesser known pioneer in detail, with the personal memories of those that knew him best. OK, it's not as funny as my opening anecdote might suggest but nevertheless, it is an exciting story; about a man on a personal, world-changing adventure in advertising.

Tag Team

Don't tell her but I nicked these straight off Alice's Tumblr…The new campaign from Ogilvy for Expedia makes great use of luggage tags. (Nicked those words too - basically, this is her post).

Peddlin'

Don't think I've ever mentioned this: I'm a cyclist. There, I've said it. I cycle. Not proper cycling I mean. Not, going out for a run at the weekend cycling. I just do a bit of cycling to work because it'll probably save my life and anyway, it's actually quicker than driving because the traffic in the morning sucks cycling. But I still love it and one effect of it is that I like cycling stuff more than I did when I wasn't a cyclist. So yes, the Olympics was trully "awesome". Wiggy and all that stuff. Brilliant.

John McD is a proper cyclist and tweeted a link to these ace ads by Mother New York earlier today. You can read a bit more about them here.