San Francisco as an Assignment

In my forty years as a free­lance commer­cial artist, there were a few time that I got to create illus­tra­tions showing images of my birth­place, San Francisco.

Here are illus­tra­tions from the early 1980s for a San Fran­cisco Tourist Publi­ca­tion. My assign­ment was to take my camera and visit various loca­tions in the city. Then I produced the two color illus­tra­tions. It was only when I was given the printed publi­ca­tion to see my work, that I found that the illus­tra­tions didn’t match the chap­ters that they were intro­ducing. It is actu­ally funny. ​“Accom­mo­da­tions” shows the Sigmund Stern Grove, one cannot stay overnight there. You could eat at the Place of Fine Arts — if you brought your lunch.
The Moscone Center accu­rately shows as a conven­tion center and the Cali­fornia Masonic Audi­to­rium, luckily, shows a cable car to repre­sent ​“Trans­porta­tion”.
If I had shown a partic­ular hotel or restau­rant there would have been prob­lems of favoritism from those not shown — so it was prob­ably fair to shuffle the art on the chapter pages.

Conven­tion Services 

Points of Interest 

Restaurants 

Visitor Facts and Information 

Sight­seeing and Tour Packages 

Trans­porta­tion and Ground Services 

Accommodations 

Shopping 

A well-know symbol of San Fran­cisco is the cable car.
One of my first assign­ments when I began free-lancing (in the late 1960s) was to create this logo for ​“Exchange 140 “ for City Savings and Loan Asso­ci­a­tion. The logo was used in various ways, such as: a busi­ness card, stationery and this folded brochure. The client requested that I add my illus­tra­tions of various enter­tain­ment features that were not shown in the brochure’s photos. I was to also show a couple ​“out on the town!”
City Savings and Loan’s main office address was, 140 Mont­gomery Street. Their offer in this brochure was: ​“Miss Mont­gomery is your key to an exciting new world of enjoy­ment”. It reads: ​“That’s right! There’s no charge for Miss Montgomery’s services arranging private reser­va­tions for Exchange 140 members at dozens upon dozens of San Francisco’s finest places, preferred seats at most impor­tant events,. And you can become a member simply by opening a modest minimum figure savings account at any of the conve­niently located City Savings and Loan offices.”
I got this assign­ment from © Copy­right 1969 Sturges and Associates.
I wonder what was the result of this personal reser­va­tion service?

City Bank Logo 

City Bank 1969 

Cable Car Layout 

Cable Car Campaign 

Street Cart 

There were several times a layout (colored pencils and markers) was needed to guide a photog­ra­pher. Also in 1983, art for this polit­ical card was requested.

There are still old street­cars that travel in San Fran­cisco. These got their power from above ground.
I remember one that was a bit newer than this one that shows above. It had a folding metal gate behind our seating in the open air area where the conductor stood. We would sit in the open air section because we had taken my aunt’s Cocker Spaniel to the beach and a dog, being a dog, had to ride outside of the warmer, enclosed section. And on the cooler and windy way back, on the N‑Judah line, we wrapped ourselves in our beach blanket that was full of sand from our after­noon at Ocean Beach.

Ann Thompson