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Qualified?

Posted on December 29, 2016October 23, 2019 By Ann Thompson

No.

In June of 1967, located in the Belli Building, I was only two years into free-lancing. Most of my assign­ments, up to then, were based on my training in design and illus­tra­tion. Usually I was assigned only the artwork. An art director in an adver­tising agency would design the job, describe the art that was needed, and upon receiving my art — follow the job to its comple­tion as printer-ready.


WALSTON & CO. Ad. Layout and Finished Art. Note: Ticker Tape Machines were still in use. ADS Advertising,

APPLIED TECHNOLOGY Layouts showing surveil­lance during the US Civil War. ADS Advertising


PALCO Saw Textured Redwood. Illus­tra­tions: of Redwood Tree and Appli­ca­tion. ADS Advertising


Cali­fornia Casu­alty CTA &TCTA Auto Insur­ance Two folders, spot illus­tra­tions. Charles Matheny Adver­tisingTHIODAN, FMC Corpo­ra­tion Trade Ad illus­tra­tions. ADS Advertising

KAISER CEMENT Trade Ad Illus­tra­tion. ADS Advertising

Looking back to the time of this following story, I appre­ciate the fact that I was not dismissed for not having a required back­ground — but was given the chance to tackle a subject completely foreign to me. Today, my résumé would be requested. With no listed studies in this subject, the job would be assigned to someone else. I would hope that clients consider an appli­cant who is willing and ready to open a study — and give that appli­cant the chance to give an interpretation.

I was called into an adver­tising agency where I faced a very tech­nical assign­ment. (In high school and junior college I chose all ​“art” classes and avoided chem­istry, physics — any tech­nical studies.) I never had a class that would have helped me with this challenge.
Arriving at ADS Adver­tising, I was intro­duced to their tech­nical copy­writer, Harry Bodenlos, who handed me what seemed to be a full ream of papers describing ​“elec­tron beam coating”. The copy for the planned 12-page brochure included the history of the proce­dure. There were no diagrams to guide me. I was to show the existing black and white photos of the equip­ment. The first read-through pretty well left me ​“blank” — but slowly, wading through it, while making visual thumb-nail notes — was fasci­nated! I was able to style, count and orga­nize the copy with places to hold small design exam­ples — forming a full 10-page descrip­tion and placing the photos inside the cover.

I had no one, during this time, over­seeing my progress.

The agency presented my work to Temescal Metal­lur­gical Corpo­ra­tion and soon I was told to ​“go to finish”. In those days, that meant illus­tra­tion boards of each double spread. My black line art and the copy, in columns that had been set by a ​“type house”, were attached with rubber cement. Acetate over­lays were attached to the boards for each of the red and blue color areas. Crop marks at the corners and ​“register marks” had to be posi­tion accu­rately. (I spell all of this out for those who now produce ​“printer-ready” files by computer.) The printed copies were well received by Temescal. Below, the most tech­nical assign­ment that I ever had:

Temescal Front Cover
Temescal Front Cover 
Temescal inside front cover
Temescal inside front cover 
Temescal High Vacuum Environmennt
Temescal High Vacuum Environmennt 
Temescal inside page
Temescal inside page 
Temescal inside page
Temescal inside page 
Temescal inside page
Temescal inside page 
Temescal inside page
Temescal inside page 
Temescal inside page
Temescal inside page 
Temescal inside page
Temescal inside page 
Temescal inside page
Temescal inside page 
Temescal inside back cover
Temescal inside back cover 
Temescal Back Cover
Temescal Back Cover 

I saw Harry again at a recep­tion, easily ten years later. He said that he had been very wary of giving the assign­ment to a 25 year old with just an art back­ground. He said that Temescal had used the brochure — through the years — as a ​“training tool” for their new recruits.

From this expe­ri­ence, I believe résumés may be very restric­tive. Many persons facing many kinds of jobs may be very qual­i­fied — by being inter­ested in and capable of offering their talents in new venues.

Ann Thompson
(Editor’s Note: Art Director, Designer, Illus­trator and Mechan­ical Artist — all the artwork in this post is Ann’s)

Geezerpedia, Of That Time, Recollections

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