Fictional Ad Agencies: A TV History of Mad Men

Posted by Michael Pinto on Jul 23, 2010 in Television

Mad Men on AMC

Don Draper from Mad Men The latest season highly anticipated season of Mad Men is set to open this weekend so we decided to take a look at the time honored tradition working at a fictional ad agency. Once upon a time ad agencies didn’t have much of a place in pop culture but the book that changed all of that was Confessions of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy in 1963. The year before Ogilvy got on the cover of Time magazine and as the 60s progressed so did the golden age of advertising agencies. And television shows picked up on this new career path for the smart set: Read more…

Tags: 1960, 1964, 1980, 1987, 1992, 2007, Bewitched, Twilight Zone

The Golden Age of Animated TV Opening Titles

Posted by Michael Pinto on Jan 25, 2009 in Animation

Bewitched: Still frame from the animated opening titles from the 60s.

As with most things in TV land our story begins in another medium — film! Back in the 50s THE designer who revolutionized opening credits was Saul Bass who favored a very graphic and illustrational approach to making opening titles an art form onto themselves. To me his masterpiece was Anatomy of a Murder in 1958 which matched a striking musical score by Duke Ellington to a simple yet powerful animation: Read more…

Tags: Animation, Batman, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, Lucille Ball, Monty Python, Rhoda, Saul Bass, The Carol Burnett Show, The Lucy Show, The Partridge Family, The Wild Wild West