One Small Step for Advertising

About twice a year my local library has a book sale, which is put on by a group of chatty octogenarians (plus one sprightly fifty year old who accepts Venmo). While most inventory is exactly what you’d expect—outdated Rick Steves guides, miscellaneous self-help, generous quantities of Joyce (James and Carol Oates)—occasionally there’s something unexpected, like a book of Victorian cat portraiture or, in this case, a beat-up cardboard box of 1960s newspapers for just $7. Besides ample coverage of the Kennedy assassination, the most heavily documented event in the papers was the Apollo 11 lunar landing. The day the astronauts touched down, The New York Times devoted its entire 18 page opening section to the achievement, including reporting, photographs, poetry, scientific diagrams, and two pages of reactions from folks like Buckminster Fuller, Jesse Jackson, The Dalai Lama, and a 12 year old from Michigan.

What I was most surprised to see were these ads. In honor of the landing, department stores like Lord & Taylor and Gimbels published illustrated poems about Genesis and stargazing, Brillo offered a free poster of the moon with purchase, and brands like Sam Goody and Hunting World wrote congratulatory letters. Of course, this was not limited to the July 21, 1969 issue of the NYT. This moon-vertising appeared for months before and after the landing; it was an event so widely understood that nearly any company could plug into it. Some advertisers had a legitimate connection to the mission—Omega supplied space-friendly watches and IBM provided research muscle—but most relied on far more tenuous associations. See: astronaut toothpaste, fruit, or tampons. All together, I read these as a case-study in virality, decades before social media existed. Far out.

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This issue’s featured archive is The E. F. Caldwell & Co. Collection at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum Library, which contains 37,000 black & white photographs and 13,000 original design drawings of lighting fixtures and other fine metal objects produced by manufacturer E. F. Caldwell & Co. from the late 19th to the mid-20th centuries.

References: Author’s scans, TimesMachine, Parade

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I wrote a lot of essays in 2025 so I’ll briefly share a few links here in case you missed them the first time around: I wrote about graphic design ennui and ethics, Ed Ruscha’s Sunset Strip, the history of business card design, National Design Studio propaganda, the murkiness of the public domain, and, more. I also continue to do lots of design work, with this year including a board game, an A24 soundtrack vinyl, and art direction for three issues of a science fiction magazine. A fun year!