From Layouts to Completion — Part Two
Layouts for illustration
Here are the examples where my layouts came close to the printed piece.
Layout for other illustrators:
I don’t know who the illustrator was for this Alza assignment. It looks to me that the artist received more detailed instruction. (Some of the information shown in black, does not show up in the blue background. The Naprosyn© finished medical ad was illustrated by Vince Perez. Vince could illustrate all parts of the human body without turning to reference.
Layouts for a cartoonists. I was asked to fashion my layouts in the style of two certain New Yorker cartoonist: Charles Saxon and Bob Weber. Bob Weber was hired for the finish art. Client: Bank Americard©
Bob Weber
From 1962 to 2007, Weber drew 1,481 cartoons for the New Yorker magazine, as well as art for 11 of its covers. The first two examples show only my guess of the scene at a railroad platform. Later I was given a xerox copy of Bob Weber’s sketch for his finished art. The three examples, again show my guess of how the cartoonist would compose the cartoon. Then, the xerox of my layout shows copy areas and image of the bank cards. The third example is Bob Weber’s art in the completed ad.
For a series of ads, again for the BankAmericard©:
I knew that the illustrator would be Bruce Wolfe, when I was given various stories as subjects for my layouts to be presented to the client. I was only able to see this “R. Van Winkle” printed ad. If Bruce Wolfe complete the full series, I never got to see that collection.
A poster for the San Francisco Opera
D’Arcy-MacManus & Massius was the SF agency. My good friend, Cathy Flanders was art director there and she asked me to create a layout for a poster of a lion’s head with a burning ship in its mouth! What did I know about opera? There wasn’t time for me to do research. (Had we had the on-line searches we have today, I would have been curious enough to find our how this subject made any sense.)
Now, after all these years I read the story of the opera on-line. It is very convoluted , but I have found these two sentences that puts the image together.
La Gioconda
(Amilcare Ponchielli was an Italian opera composer, best known for his opera La Gioconda.)
ACT I: THE LION’S MOUTH Barnaba dictates a note to the scribe Isèpo, denouncing Enzo and revealing his plan to leave the city with Laura, and puts it in the Lion’s Mouth, the repository for denunciations to the Inquisition.
ACT II: THE ROSARY When Enzo returns, Gioconda explains to him that Barnaba has betrayed his plan and urges him to return to the city with her, while cannons are fired from Alvise’s ship. Enzo defiantly affirms his love for Laura, then sets fire to his own ship and leaps into the lagoon.
The Italian sculptures that I had always seen looked like Marble. So my lion was Marble. (I should have, at least, had my lion snarl, baring its teeth and showing the ship with brighter fire!) Bruce Wolfe chose Black Marble, or Black Granite.
(I have written of Bruce Wolfe, previously. He moved into sculpture and was no longer illustrating commercially.)
Layouts for me to illustrate:
Cutter Biomedical, January 25,1985, Las Vegas Convention Center. Theme: “Celebrating the Wines of California”“A RETURN TO ELEGANCE”
“Thumbnail” sketches were always the start. My many assignments with the California wines, led to me easily showing the ‘romantic” scenarios. For this assignment I was to avoid that, as this was a business event. Also showing a large number of people was out, but if a couple was shown, they were to be shown with no interaction. You can see the study of positions, color, of no color, and then the final printed poster,
San Francisco Ballet
There were times when I worked directly, as I did with the San Francisco Ballet when II would visit their office, discuss my work with their publicity director and where Lew Christiansen (the Ballet’s Director) was present to view my presentation.
I show the three layouts that I presented for SF Ballet’s yearly Nutcracker poster and promo pieces. I was lucky with their choice. The poster with the two dancers and four background — and the one with the 16 separate illustrations — would have been so much more work for the same amount of money.
My first step were rough pencil sketches with some spots of color. For the final poster I chose the type fonts and created the finish with color (DR. PH. MARTIN’S dyes) with fine line art and the type on a film overlay prepared for the printer
Cutter Biomedical —a plan for a poster and an unusual direct mail.
This rough, was for a Cutter Biomedical gathering in 1978 in New Orleans. My two sketches triggered this additional plan of this (36”) folded direct mail invitation.
I did find some additional layouts that were requested of me that where to be assigned to a photographer — -for which I don’t have clients or products noted:
The Kayaker might have been for Aleve© and the female face looks to be for an optical product. The agency had Cooper Vision as a client and also Barnes Hind, in the past. Maybe it was for a sensitive report about chemotherapy? But the two B/W examples? Hard to guess the clients. The last one, what the?
I have the full list of my free-lance jobs, so somewhere in there I could find why I created these layouts. All of these might have been presented to a client and then proceeded to completion — or not.
Ann Thompson