This is what announcement outdoor did best in the mind of Chevy--show the new car and tell who was offering it. If that is the objective then it can't be done much better than this. When people view outdoor ads it is for only a brief few seconds in most locations. The illustration may have been done by Dave Lindsay. I wish I could remember but I am happy to have saved this example from so long ago.

This is a very nice illustration of a 1965 Chevy convertible that has faded a bit but still shows what was possible back then. I think it was intended for an outdoor board but could have been used for a magazine or catalog illustration too. Wish I knew who did the work--could have been one of the fine West Coast illustrators or one of the Detroit group. There was lots of demand for this kind of work then and there were quite a few artists capable of this degree of excellence. 

I'll bet no car illustrator did this picture of the new 1958 Impala with the Turbo-Thrust V8. But, it says all the right things about Chevy performance. Ideas like this with no actual product shown were always a difficult sell to our Chevy clients. This was a very memorable outdoor board for the time. A few years later Pontiac used the same symbol to great advantage. 

I wish the color was better on this 1958 Impala poster and most of the other boards in this series. But they are taken from old slides and are better than not seeing them at all. Outdoor ads are kind of like old newspaper ads in terms of longevity. The newspaper ads are used to wrap the trash and the outdoor ads are papered over when their time is up never to be seen again. Still outdoor ads for Chevy were very important in getting their new products before the public. A posting for Chevy would cover just about every major stretch of highway and important intersection in America. The copy makes a good competitive leadership statement while calling attention to the great looking new Impala convertible. Photography wasn't used for outdoor back then and the product illustrations are so strong one might wonder if illustration could help some car lines even today. If the reason for showing a car on an outdoor board is to show how it looks illustrations are perhaps better than photography.

This was the first year for the 1958 Impala. It was a real departure from the very lovable 1957 Bel Air and it was larger and more luxurious too. The artist for this illustration has given the car considerable extra length. You can see it in the area behind the rear wheels. But you must remember this was a time of lower, longer, and wider for cars of all kinds. And you cant blame the artist alone for the extra length on the car because a Campbell-Ewald Art Director had to approve the pencil drawing on the car before it was finally rendered. There were guys in art studios that could do the pencil drawings from photographs by cutting them apart and then spreading them out to get the required look to be penciled on to illustration board and then rendered by an illustrator. Their talent for doing this went largely unrecognized but was essential as the top notch illustrators seldom did their own pencil drawings.

1958 Chevrolet Outdoor Board Layout

This is what a rough layout looks like. It was most likely made by one of the regular art directors on the account. It may have been shown to the client just as you see it or it could have have been sent on to an art studio for a more comprehensive rendition. My guess is that it went to our Chevy client as you see it. It may have not been chosen to be produced or it may have moved to another stage with a different view of the car or with a new copy line. Anyhow it gives you an idea of the kind of thing that was often made in the agency. This was just a short time after the introduction of magic markers. Before that, layouts were rendered with pastels. They were very messy and required a spray of fixative applied to keep them from being smeared. A long way from the computers that are used today for very sharp and realistic layouts.

The new Corvette for '63 was something else. For the first time you could own a roadster like this or what we now call a split-window coupe. There was an outdoor board for each line of Chevy offerings but I have only two. This one and the big Chevy below. The story of the word "Exciting" is related below. This illustration was in color and as I recall it was a black Corvette so not too different from our picture here. This may have been done by Dave Lindsay as well as the Chevy below.