Mad Men poster illustrator: Brian Sanders

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If you are a New Yorker you have seen the new season of Mad Men poster whooshing by on the side of buses. It immediately takes you back to that those halcyon days of mid-century illustration. As an illustrator with a pretty busy workload I feel so grateful because I know that the use of illustration has waned greatly since then and probably will continue to. I love how painting styles float in and out of fashion and can be re-born for a modern day while paying homage to the past. mid-century illustration techniques are so in vogue at the moment. It was great when The New York Times looked up the illustrator of said poster and found out that it was illustrator Brian Sanders whose work graced hundreds of ads, magazines and book covers in the 60’s.

How great is this story?:

Matthew Weiner, inspired by a childhood memory of lush, painterly illustrations on T.W.A. flight menus, decided to turn back the promotional clock. He pored over commercial illustration books from the 1960s and ’70s and sent images to the show’s marketing team, which couldn’t quite recreate the look he was after.

“Finally,” he said, “they just looked up the person who had done all these drawings that I really loved, and they said: ‘Hey, we’ve got the guy who did them. And he’s still working. His name is Brian Sanders.

Sanders is now 75 with an incredible body of work behind him… and ahead.

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