Printed Poster Designs Series, 1934-1940

Scope and content:

Consists mainly of black and white printed cards of billboard advertising designs. Most images are in a preliminary stage of design completion, and many are stock designs with no actual brand names appearing. Some, however, are more polished, containing added information about placement in competitions (e.g., Annual Exhibition of Outdoor Advertising Art), the artist, and the outdoor advertising company that presumably produced the design. Foster and Kleiser and General Outdoor Advertising Co. are the two firms most often mentioned on cards. The company "Sales Promotional Service" is also found. This company may have distributed stock design cards to subscribers, probably outdoor advertising companies, to solicit use of its artwork. The cards were thus used as sales tools--some are printed on the reverse with information directed to clients including pricing. Some General Outdoor Advertising Co. cards appear to have designs stamped in blue ink. This particular group of cards was used in recordkeeping; they contain information about particular clients that used the design such as client name, pricing, contract length, salesman, and type of display.

Organized by product or service type categories. Some categories overlap, and so certain topics appear in more than one category. A few numbered categories contain no cards/designs.

Contents

Using These Materials