1969 EST Christmas Ad

Here's a neat ad that ran December 24, 1969 in the Journal for Elyria Savings & Trust (now FirstMerit Bank). It features the actual signatures of the employees as the branches of the Christmas tree – a great, original gimmick.

I showed this to the other artist at my work so we could figure out how this was done. We decided that there was probably an oversized template that all of the employees had to sign, probably with small lines to help guide them printed in non-photo blue (so they wouldn't be picked up by the graphic arts camera).

We also reasoned that there must have been different versions of the tree, with a different branch arrangement depending on the number of employees.

But no matter how it was accomplished, it was pretty clever.