Friday, January 16, 2009

I wore many hats at Ward's Quarterly

I really enjoyed working as art director on Ward's Quarterly having pretty much a free hand with the design and art of the publication. Actually, it was a perfect outlet for me, being a graphic designer as well as an artist that works in various techniques. Morley Driver, the Detroit Free Press art critic was the Editorial Director and she encouraged and backed me in the direction I was taking. From an artist's point of view it was a dream job. Often on the inside covers I would do a special design or try a new concept such as the collage below. At the time this was unheard for magazine design as normally ads run on these pages.

Ward's 1a
This collage was done by cutting and pasting various photostats of auto parts together. Today a design like this would be much easier to create on the computer.

Wards 24 copy

These spot drawings were for an article on American Motors international expansion. The drawings were done in ink on scratchboard, a coated illustration board that allows you to scrape lines on your drawing with a special tool. This technique is very effective for small line drawings. Being saddled with a limited budget I did most of the magazine's artwork often under different names, these were signed Albert Friday.

Wards 25

Wards 26

Some of the many cartoons that I drew for the magazine under the name Manfred Bochum.

Ward's 2a

Above are some realistic ink sketches drawn with a brush.

Ward's 3a

Cartoons added a lot of life to the pages of Ward's Quarterly.

Wards 27

I really enjoyed working on Ward's Quarterly but had some problems with the Editor/Publisher and quit after three issues. This move also eased my heavy schedule a bit, at the time I was also teaching full time and working at Al Hutt Studios. All in all, it was a great experience and a wonderful showcase for my work. Quite a bit of work from ad agencies resulted from this exposure.

I want to mention that I post every Monday Wednesday and Friday. My other blog, HAIRY BLOGMAN, is posted every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, if you are interested in digital art, check it out.

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