A couple weeks ago, I found three original issues of Fortune Magazine from 1930, the year the magazine originally launched! I couldn’t believe what I was looking at. No. 2, No. 4. & No. 5. March, May, & June. These are the actual things. Oversized, printed on heavy cream paper, with full-color ads that feel more like art prints than advertising. They cost a dollar each when they came out. In 1930, that was roughly […]
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TL;DR I found a November 1960 issue of Life magazine featuring an article on Martin Luther King Jr., written while the Civil Rights Movement was still unfolding. Reading it now—after growing up learning about MLK through textbooks and commemorations—offers a rare, first-hand look at him not as a finished historical figure, but as a leader navigating uncertainty in real time. This piece reflects on that article, the moment it captures, and why physical archives like […]
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Every December, Coca‑Cola seems to bounce back everywhere at once — glowing red trucks, cheerful Santas, glass bottles catching the light. But long before modern holiday commercials, Coca‑Cola was already shaping what Christmas refreshment looked like. This season, I’ve been slowly collecting original Coca‑Cola print ads dating from 1911–1941, and they feel like small time capsules: equal parts marketing, illustration, and cultural history. This felt like the perfect moment to share what I collected so […]
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Intro I recently bought this 1929 Saturday Evening Post advertisement for Franklin Automobiles because of its design. The illustration shows a woman stepping out of a red Franklin with the tagline: “Air-cooled motoring, the only different performance makes Franklin the road champion.” When I examined this further at home, I took it out of its folder, turned it over, and found a surprise. The back carried a continuation of a feature article titled “Peace by […]
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