Tuesday’s ad is for Miller High Life, from 1960. In this ad, one of a series featuring a nearly black and white ad, with only the beer in color, and the same man engaged in various activities. This time, he’s playing pool, excuse me, billiards, while wearing a tuxedo. He’s eyeing his next shot, and holding a beer in his hand. This is the last one of this series of ads I was able to find. There may be others, but these are the only ones I found. I also discovered that they were all created by an Australian illustrator named John McCormick at Kling Studios in Chicago. McCormick created the ads using a technique known as scratchboard, which is “both a medium, and an illustrative technique using sharp knives and tools for etching into a thin layer of white China clay that is coated with black India ink.” Uncle Ron was an intern at the studio in 1954 and met McCormick while he was there, and tells the story in his Uncle Ron’s Blog. Unfortunately it’s the only information I could find at all about McCormick’s amazing art.
And while I couldn’t find an image of the entire ad larger then the one above, I did find a larger detail of part of the ad centering on the man in black.
