Life, 1921-06-16 · page 27 of 36
Life — June 16, 1921 — page 27: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is primarily an advertisement for printing paper, not political satire. The "cartoon" depicts a domestic scene where a woman discards poorly printed materials, establishing the ad's central argument: **bad printing quality makes customers—particularly women—throw products away.** The satirical angle targets businesses and printers who ignore the woman consumer's aesthetic judgment. The ad argues that women shoppers judge products by their physical appearance, and poorly designed catalogs and pamphlets get dismissed as worthless trash. The solution: use Warren's Standard Printing Papers to create professional-looking materials that women won't discard. The subtext reflects early 20th-century attitudes acknowledging women's purchasing power while also stereotyping them as instinctively discerning (or dismissive) of design quality. The ad positions better paper as the foundation for professional printing that respects the female consumer's influence on purchasing decisions.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
ay “Why, I threw that old thing away” ANY a man has heard from the lips of wife, secretary, or maid the ex- planation that, “It didn’t look as if it could be anything, so I threw it away when I was straightening up.” Usually the thing lost is a booklet, a cat- alog, a house magazine, or some pamphlet so poorly printed and generally unattrac- tive that feminine instinct prompted the thought that it was worthless. Printed catalogs and books intended to sell goods are not well planned if they ig- nore the growing importance of the woman customer and the weight her opinion carries in determining any kind of purchase. One way to ignore this woman is to for- get that the physical appearance of your printing determines to a large extent her first impression of its importance to her, and of the general desirability of what you have to sell. If you want your printing to look better, you must start with better paper. Start with the paper. When you lay out your printing, know what kind of paper you are going to use, and know just what to expect from it. ‘ We want every buyer of printing .to be familiar with the names and users of War- ren’s Standard Printing Papers. Once each month we issue a printed book on one of these papers. These books serve a double purpose. They show exactly the kind of work that can be done on the paper, and they may be cut up and used as dummy material for a number of different style booklets. Thus the book recently issued is printed on Warren’s Cameo. It shows speci- mens of type faces, type pages, title pages, covers, illustrations, rules, borders, decora- tions, etc., that are exactly the sort of thing needed for the first steps in planning printing. These books are not sold, but are distrib- uted to printers, engravers, advertising man- agers, artists, and designers by paper mer- chants who sell Warren’s Standard Printing Papers. If you do not know the Warren Distributorin your city, write us for his name. Pristine apes D. WARREN COMPANY, BOSTON, MASS. WARREN'S STANDARD PRINTING PAPERS comicbooks.com