Old school versus new school illustration approaches

¶ … Hadden Sundblom epitomizes the best of the Old School Illustrators.

His work in the middle-third of the 20th century created three iconic advertising images that are still found in marketing today -- Coca Cola's Santa Claus, Aunt Jemima's Mammy and Quaker Oat's Quaker. Indeed, his depiction of Santa Claus in Coca Cola's Christmas advertising campaigns from the 1930s through the 1960s created the image of Saint Nick that all others are compelled to copy, and his imagery was considered so emblematic of the era that his last "Santa" was a cover for Playboy magazine. Sundblom's approach was characteristic of the Old School method in which soft pastel colors with slightly blurred edges were contrasted with sharper edges and colors to make the art seem to jump from the page. Like most old school illustration, Sundblom placed his subjects in easily recognizable daily situations whereby the reader or viewer could immediately empathize with the art in question and could feel comfortable and at ease with the imagery. And like most old school illustration, Sunblom's technique created a sort of "photographic realism" in that the details of the image in question provide a understated starkness as one finds in a well-focused photograph. This method provides much of the frame for the old school method.

With the rise of photography however, old school illustrators found themselves in increasing competition for page space with photographers, and to help maintain a competitive edge, Old School slowly gave way to the New. In order to keep the readers or viewers attention, the new school illustrator did away with the "realism" so to speak, of the old school, and the art began to move to figures with subtly broken lines. The austere lines found in old school illustration became softer, less focused and more abstract in the New School, and nowhere is this more clearly seen than in the art of Sheilah Beckett. Reflecting the national mood's shift from a war time footing to the post World War Two (and the 1950s') optimism, Beckett was one of very few women to break into the old-boys club found in the Cooper Studio. Her work can be characterized as Disneyesque in the sense that her style was more fluid and abstract, and her illustration has a playful cartoon quality to it that appears to highlight the optimism found in the early 1960s. New school illustration seems fitted for the era, since its fractured quality seems to coincide with the fracturing of American society during the civil rights and Vietnam War era. Gone is the certainty that life had to offer during the old school period (and which is reflected in the solidity of the art,) and instead, we find an art that evolves as society gets used to being defined by rapid technological and social change. Nevertheless, one cannot look at either of the schools without being transported back to a much different time in which a simpler life was guided by a more innocent art (except of course, for the pin up art).