Agitation alert

Think I need to get me a jar of Thorazine and keep it in my drawer at work. For emergency use only. Obviously!

Marvelous letterheads

Email has pretty much taken over from letter writing theses days. Which is a bit of a shame really as there's nothing quite like the feeling of receiving and opening personal mail.


In the same way that email has taken the place of the letter so too has the email signature taken the place of the letterhead. Which is another great shame as a great letterhead beats a dodgy old email signature hands down.


To see for yourself how good a letterhead can be click here and go see some genuine classics.

Early urban spam

I always thought that ambient advertising and urban spam were relativly recent ideas.

By recent I mean the last 20 years.

Turns out advertising has been invading public spaces for a lot longer than I realised.

Back in 1930 a Barcelona wine merchant used a rolling drum and stencil to advertise his wares on the pavement.

Unlike today's interuptive advertisers he didn't use paint.

He used water!

Which meant that after a while his messaging disappeared.

Environmentally sensitive advertising. In the 1930s.

Who'd have thought?

Headline of the week

Obviously this ad predates the war on terror. Then again maybe the client just had a warped sense of humour. Who knows!

Did God approve this?

Stumbled across this less than classic ad today. Proof that even Apple was daggy when they were young.

Cheap Heroin

The cheapest specific for the relief of coughs.

Especially at just $4.35 per ounce. Even less if you buy in bulk.

Boy how times change.

Not as old as it seems

Silly as it may sound I think this ad was ahead of its time.

It doesn't try to sell the product.

The headline makes no reference to any kind of product benefit.

And the product itself is pretty much obscured.

Sure it's obviously dated. Not to mention sexist.

But by associating the product with nothing more than enjoyment, I believe this ad is an early example of the use of emotion as a selling technique for a 'me too' product.