Color is important, Ask Alan Lefkort !
In the previous collection, I wanted to show the 1963 Award of Excellence for Direct Mail that was awarded to Alan Lefkort. The pages from the ADASF annual of that year were only in black and white. You will see that this winning design was not clear enough to show the image that made it a success.
I reached Alan to see if he could share the actual letterhead and envelope, for me to show here. He told the story of being told by Bob Pritikin that the stationery could only be printed in one color, black. Alan had to fight for color! The whole advertising world knew that the copywriters used yellow legal tablets as they came up with a winning headline, body copy and all copy needed to reach the public in print and all other media of advertising.
As copy developed, there were a lot of ideas that the copywriter tossed to the wastebasket. This was the normal process until the best copy ideas were born.
1963 Award of Excellence San Francisco Art Directors and Artists Club
The small type at the bottom of the letterhead reads: Board of Directors / Howard Gossage, Peggy Greenfield, Hal Larson, Dan Lewis, Fred Manley, Hanley Norins, Bob Pritikin, Nelson Shreve, George Sutton, Julian Watkins.
Alan Lefkort was often “covering two bases”: art director and copywriter. He brought the two valuable talents to many San Francisco advertising agencies: McCann, Y&R, Dailey & Associates, D’Arcy-MacManus & Masius and Guild, Bascom & Bonfigli. Clever concepts of words and images came together in one place, on Alan’s drawing board. Visiting Alan, I saw a large collection of printed pieces of a variety of corporations that advertised through San Francisco’s talented teams.
The Advertising Club of San Francisco’s Cable Car Awards, 1981 publication was among Alan’s collection. This 48-page collection was called “The Sweepstakes Awards” because of the record amount of entries that year. Alan was the first ever to win the Marget Larsen Award for art direction. He was, at that time, vice-president and executive art director for Dailey & Associates, San Francisco.
Marget Larsen Award This was the art direction award that Alan received for the image that he created for this “Black and White Newspaper Ad” category even though his copy “Berth Announcement” was also a ‘winning’ copywriter’s line for the whole campaign for Philippine Airlines.
Ann Thompson