A decline in print ad creativity

The complete collection, so far.

The latest book for my collection, bringing it up to ten titles. In the intro, Steve Heller makes a good point: the ad industry started a decline in creativity around 2000. Print media outlets for ads were slowly evaporating and the advance of digital media was expanding so that ads evolved from print to the small screen and with the advent of cell phones, a very small screen. Looking at the hundreds of ads in these pages, it seems that the bland has taken over. Photos are in with relatively small, straightforward headlines. There are very few purely typographic ads or strong illustrations that were prominent in the books from previous decades.

If you have some previous editions, you'll be familiar with the format. The ads are divided into ten categories and presented as, occasionally one over a spread, or one to a page and four to a page. Like the other books, they are printed on decent matt art paper. This title (and the 90s) is hardcover; all the others had slightly oversized soft covers.

Here's an interesting point about previous decade editions, especially if you want to buy them. Taschen have reprinted them with fewer pages than the original ones. I've only checked out five titles with the original pages and reprint pages in brackets:

30s ISBN 3822816205   Pages 768  (Reprint 640)

40s 3822814687   768 (704) 

50s 3822811580   928 (679)

60s 3822811599   960  (639)

70s 382281265x   704  (638)

The 50s and 60s have had a sizeable page reduction.