This catalog was designed by my first boss at Campbell-Ewald, Chevrolet's ad agency, Harry Borgman. Harry is still very much alive and working. When this catalog was produced the car industry wasn't spending much on this kind of thing. By todays standard this is a pretty small book. The paper is not nearly as good as that being used today and I am sure the printing wasn't as good. Still if you have one of these I'll bet it is worth a bunch. I haven't seen one for sale in a very long time. Catalogs were always started long before any advertising had been decided upon and were close to going to the printer when ads were finalized. There was considerable lead time involved because of the tremendous number of books involved. It took a train load of paper to print one of these. Remember there were about 6000 or so dealers and each one needed a good supply to give away. Sometimes the art from the catalog would be used in an ad but for the most part the catalog art was to simply show what the car looked like and what colors it came in. If you came to this post first be sure to check the information about Harry Borgman. It should be right above this.
1 comment:
Hi Jim,
The original catalog actually had the headline "Sweet, Smooth and Sassy" on the cover, you might have picked this one up from one of my promotion pieces, I couldn't find my original catalog and pieced this one together from some old photos I had. The art in the catalog was done by McNamara Brothers studio,the great Dave Lindsay did most of the cars as well as the cover art.
Harry
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