Friday, July 24, 2009

Painting for Ford Times was great exposure

Through the paintings done for Ford Times I was getting a tremendous amount of exposure which resulted in quite a few advertising assignments. Below is the last cover that I painted for the magazine as well as some of my first advertising illustrations.
This experience taught me how important exposure is.

FT12-51
I believe that this is the last painting that I did for Ford Times. It depicts the elephant erosions in the Windows section of Arches National Monument in eastern Utah, a spectacular place to visit.

The ads below were some of the advertising work that was generated through my exposure in Ford Times Magazine. These ads were from McManus, John and Adams and ran in the April and May 1949 issues of Fortune Magazine. If I remember correctly, the art director was Jean Bice.

41-1 Bower

41-2 Saran 1
These were the first national ads that I did, they helped launch my illustration career and led to many other interesting assignments.

41-3 Saran 2


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2 comments:

Tris Mast said...

I can honestly say that is the most beautiful ad for bearings I've ever seen!

That Ford Times cover may be my all time favorite.

Harry Borgman said...

Hi Tris,
WOW ! Thanks for making my day. The Bower ad was a real tough job, I almost couldn't handle it, I was thrown into the ring and it was do or die. I was pretty young and inexperienced and most of my early assignments were of this nature. A lot of the Detroit artists at the time were given assignments that were beyond our abilities, we just somehow muddled through and learned a lot. I don't think that this kind of a situation exists today, although I may be wrong. Perhaps some readers can enlighten me on this.
Thanks, Tris