When Color Was Special

Yesterday the print version of the Pioneer Press included a special insert called "From the Archives," a 48-page magazine looking back on the paper's 170-year history through clippings. Paging through it was more bitter than sweet, given the condition of the present-day PiPress, which has been gutted by private equity raiders and has just a few reporters hanging on to cover all the local news (plus fossils like columnist Joe Soucheray, who should retire).

It was fun looking through it, despite the paper's present condition, and I may even keep it, at least for a while.

The one bit I want to share is this image from some time in the 1950s:


The image is not well captioned, but I surmise that it was a Sunday promotional flag, maybe used on an outer wrapper, maybe on the front page itself, or maybe on the comics section. It's clearly from a bygone day when the Sunday comics weren't smashed onto four pages, when there were three magazine inserts, when the use of wire services was something to promote. The hand-lettered art would have been turned into letterpress plates and printed in four colors. The black art is pretty far out of registration (check out the orange overshoots within the number 100, for instance). The word "Feature" is done in a nice brush script.

It's just a lovely mid-century piece of commercial art, and I'm glad they shared it.