This gorgeously designed book showcases the design work of Dorothy and Otis Shepard, two unsung giants of twentieth-century advertising in America, who created billboards and ad campaigns for some of the most iconic brands and companies of the day: Chesterfield cigarettes, Wrigley's gum, Kraft, Pabst, and Chevrolet.
Unparalleled in prominence, the graphic design work of Dorothy and Otis Shepard were inescapable in the 1920s and 1930s.
Not only were their ad campaigns for Wrigley's and Chevrolet big in name, but the work itself was also magnified in scale - Dorothy's 1933 design for the first neon billboard (for Wrigley's) in Times Square was also the world's largest.
While Dorothy and Otis's work has enjoyed a cult-like status and following among graphic designers today, their work has never been cataloged in book format.
This publication is a monumental event and is sure to draw a new audience of aficionados to their work.
Their impact on the world of advertising is second only to their love story, as tragic and American as they come.
The book begins at the turn of the century, with Otis "Shep" Shepard in the Midwest and Dorothy Van Gorder in California.
Otis learned photography and comic drawing before reporting for war, his sketches and portraits from the field accompanying the text.
Dorothy, an intellectual early feminist and bohemian, studied at arts school in Oakland.
The pair met in San Francisco in 1927 working for the same ad agency, married, and promptly moved to New York City.
Their campaigns matched the grandeur of the Shepards' lifestyle, and subsequent chapters break down the largest endeavors.
Billboards became the new scope of communications and brought a wave of creativity to graphic design.
Both Dorothy and Otis had a penchant for abstraction and modernism, evident in large, four-color spreads of their designs and her illustrations.
Their influence touched all aspects of consumer culture: collaborating on packaging for Wrigley's Gum; designing uniforms and logos for the Chicago Cubs; planning and promoting the resort island Catalina where their friends Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Clark Gable, and others frequented.
Over the years their marriage strained and the two split.
As pioneering as she was in her youth, and still considered the first female American modernist designer, Dorothy gave up her career and art to raise their two children, while Otis continued as art director for Wrigley's in Chicago.
Dorothy and Otis's partnership was momentous, yet for all their iconic imagery their names are forgotten amongst mainstream culture today.
Dorothy and Otis restores their names to the canon of great graphic designers and admen. Their legendary work was the stuff of the American Dream: it not only captured the higher-living desires of Depression-era Americans, but it also spoke to the modern grandeur and desires the Shepards' envisioned for the world and for themselves.
