There is a new book out about advertising fabled Art Director Helmut Krone. Helmut Krone was one of the big names in the Creative Revolution which changed advertising forever, and some call him the Godfather of modern art direction. Forty years after he'd created the Volkswagen Beetle campaign it was voted 'the most famous campaign ever' which must have looked great on his resume.
His work is in the Museum of Modern Art and the Smithsonian. He has been inducted into Art Directors' Halls of Fame from New York to Berlin.
Before Helmut Krone advertising art direction was either 'old' commercialised art or 'new' graphic design, after Helmut the idea was the Art Direction.
Recently in Stockholm there was an exhibit of all DDB from the creative revolution where visitors could feast their eyes on the work from Helmut Krone, Julian Koenig, Bill Bernbach and others. At the exhibition one could pick up a copy of this new book Helmut Krone. The Book.. (via Researcher)
The book has been put together by Clive Challis, who worked as an advertising art director in New York and London and before that as an editorial designer for London’s Sunday Times magazine. For the past seven years he has headed the advertising course at Central Saint Martins. He was recently selected to teach the first Cannes Academy at the International Advertising Festival.

Helmut Krone started out as a graphic designer who despised advertising – and finished up as an art director claiming to be a graphic designer, 'the only one in hard-core advertising,' he said.
Krone shaped the two most important ad campaigns ever: for Volkswagen and the 'We try harder.' campaign for Avis. These two campaigns explored the difference between graphic design and advertising art direction – in fact Krone's work defined modern art direction for print. Krone continued to be daring, contentious, and polarising with his work for Audi, Scotts, Porsche and Polaroid. He consistently located the difference between what the client wanted to say and what the consumer needed to realise.

"Among art directors there’s Helmut Krone and then there’s everyone else."
Bob Gage, DDB's first art director.

The book contains 800 illustrations: Krone's work, the work which influenced him and the work he superceded.

It relies on primary sources: Krone's portfolios, notes and manuscripts; the records of Doyle Dane Bernbach; the contemporary trade press; TV and documentary recordings and over 150 interviews with colleagues, competitors and the other seditionaries of the Creative Revolution.

The book analyses the marketing and business conditions, and the sociological and economic wave of change Krone rode and shows just how revolutionary Krone's work was within those contexts.

"Krone understood that a message targeted purely at the eye lacks recall – aimed a couple of inches higher, at the brain, it sticks."
David Stuart, The Partners, and co-author of A smile in the mind.

"Helmut Krone was the Godfather of modern art direction. He gave it the look, the attitude and the style that turned advertising into a smart industry. If you really want to be a great art director then this is the one art director you have to study."
John Hegarty, Bartle Bogle Hegarty.

The book is a hardcover published by Cambridge Enchorial Press Ltd, ISBN: 0-9548931-0-7. We've asked for an excerpt from the book (which I'm sure they will supply) so that we can add this recommendation to the Adbooks section. A must have in the bookshelf of budding art directors, designers, writers, and ad history buffs.

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