Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
5.0 out of 5 stars
100 Years of Advertising in British Aviation, 4 Jun 2009
An area of particular interest to me as an aviation artist this book in-spite of the botched, rubbish, dust jacket was not disappointing. Like the author, I found weekly copies of Flight, Aeroplane & Janes annual roundup an absolute Gold mine of aviation photos and artwork.
This books format is ideal for presenting a full range of images and allowing emphasis for the efforts that were truly remarkable. One observation here was that the initial pages are all black and white photos, only normal for the times. The paucity of expensive photo engravings obliged wordsmiths to step in & fill the void in the ad space. Technological constraints was one thing but also a sign of those financially desperate times in aviation.
Having said that, right from the get-go, Jan.1920, some startling, creative, colour artwork appeared on the Aviation scene. As with the Railways and Shipping lines, brilliant graphic styles were applied by the available pool of British working artists. For Flight and Aeroplane, each week held us spellbound, well into the late 1950's. Then colour photos, thought to be good enough, took hold. The competing wordsmiths proved it could be done for less, removed the visual components altogether, and strangled the whole thing to death.
Ironically, when copies of Flight & Aeroplane were bound into volumes, these precious 'advertisements' were dis-guarded and only a few have fallen into the hands of fanatics. But, where, oh where must some of these originals to be found today?
Some truly brilliant ads that made us look into the industry as a whole. A complete, non-starter list of artwork projects, that leave the viewer asking "Just what the hell are they playing at..?" And then there are the truly ludicrous, the pilot demo, with him sitting in his crashed & burning aircraft wearing an asbestos suit. The Busby clad Guardsmen, standing under the whirling blades of an S-51 helicopter, "Because they can!"
It is all there to see, a refreshing, progressive look over those innocent days, when daft kids could consider each of these ads every week and make an intelligent decision as whether to run out and buy a Cierva Autogiro or a Westland Wyvern whenever they saved up enough pocket money. And then, some just as daft, Aeronautical engineering concerns who thought they could just run out ads of concepts that would never fly further than on these printed pages. But where, oh where, are these original thinkers to be found today?
|
|
|
|
by Roy Cross
by Leo Marriott
by David Bownes
by Stephen Skinner
With an Amazon.co.uk Gift Certificate, you can get them what they want (even if you don't know what that is). 
Amazon Home