Decade
1930s ads
The best ads of the 1930s, from Cassandre's Dubonnet and Normandie posters to Coca-Cola's Santa Claus and GM's Futurama at the World's Fair.
All ads
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1939Dig for Victory
Before the Second World War Britain imported around 55 million tons of food a year, and German U-boats went straight for the merchant ships carrying…
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1939Keep Calm and Carry On
One of Britain's best-known posters was barely seen in the war it was made for.
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1939Futurama (Highways and Horizons)
The most popular exhibit at the 1939–40 New York World's Fair was, in effect, an advertisement for the motor car.
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1936The Wienermobile
A 13-foot metal hot dog on wheels.
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All Roads Lead to SwitzerlandSwiss National Tourist Office1935
All Roads Lead to Switzerland
The Swiss National Tourist Office's first poster for motor touring, and a landmark in putting the camera to work for advertising.
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NormandieCompagnie Générale Transatlantique (French Line)1935
Normandie
An ocean liner drawn like a monument.
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1935The Guinness Toucan ("Just think what Toucan do")
The bird that made a stout lovable.
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Dubo, Dubon, DubonnetDubonnet1932
Dubo, Dubon, Dubonnet
A poster that behaves like a strip of film.
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Santa Claus (Haddon Sundblom's Coca-Cola Santas)Coca-Cola1931
Santa Claus (Haddon Sundblom's Coca-Cola Santas)
The Santa much of the world pictures, warm, plump, rosy-cheeked and grandfatherly, owes a great deal to a soft-drink campaign.
Advertising in the 1930s
Posters and magazine illustration still lead the 1930s entries, but the decade also produced durable characters and a founding piece of brand experience.
When the Museum of Modern Art gave A.M. Cassandre a solo exhibition in 1936, it announced him as probably the world's foremost poster designer. Dubo, Dubon, Dubonnet filled a little drinker with colour panel by panel as the name built up beside him, a serial poster designed to be read from moving vehicles. Normandie placed the viewer low, dead ahead of the liner's bow, and sold size, power and calm with no list of comforts. Herbert Matter, who had assisted Cassandre, made All Roads Lead to Switzerland one of the first travel posters built purely from photographs, splicing tourist pictures into a single seamless view.
Characters gave brands a face. Haddon Sundblom's Santa Claus paintings for Coca-Cola gave Santa the face people still remember, and John Gilroy and Dorothy L. Sayers made the Guinness toucan a lasting mascot. Late in the Depression, Oscar Mayer put a metal hot dog on wheels to stand out from its competitors: the Wienermobile, which was the ad, the mascot and the photo opportunity at once.
The decade closes with Futurama, General Motors' ride at the 1939 New York World's Fair. It carried visitors over a model of America in 1960 and sold a future built around driving rather than any particular car.