“Advertising is all about having a perfect tan and driving a cool car. It’s all about image.”
”
Glen Hiller, graphic designer, Berkely Springs, WV

This quote has a very odd context, and happens to bear relevance to what I am working on right now –an article for IABC magazine on the changing role of advertising. Laura Ries has agreed to an interview. If you recall her book, (co-authored with her dad, Al Ries) “The fall of advertising and the rise of PR” made some unsettling points about how advertising has been so obsessed with image, that it’s being relegated to an ‘art.’ No different from how painting, when it gave way to photography, continued to live as an art form, losing its communications function.

Incidentally, Hiller is a graphic designer, who was dismissed from his job at a design and ad firm, Octavio Designs, because he protested the Iraq war at a Bush appearance. See article. Why was he dismissed? It offended the ad firm’s client, apparently!