When print advertising shifted from black and white to color

As consumer products grew more colorful, so did the ads. View an image gallery.

Lakeside Press Studios. For Michigan Bell Telephone Company
Lakeside Press Studios. Sport.
Lakeside Press Studios. Color advertisement.
Nickolas Muray. Lucky Strike Girl. Photographers strove to make color prints that matched the original transparencies and the objects they depicted as closely as possible. Muray, writes Banta, “was the master of trichrome carbro printing, considered one of the superior color processes of the time and one that became widely used.”

The 1934 Rockefeller Plaza exhibition of advertising and industrial photography consisted mostly of black-and-white images, but did include some color prints, four of them shown here (see “Click and Ka-ching,” July-August, page 84). The High Art of Photographic Advertising, a reprise of the 1934 exhibition, is on view at Baker Library, Harvard Business School, through October 9. In the accompanying catalog, guest curator Melissa Banta explains the challenge of color. 

“Color photography made its appearance in magazine advertising in the 1890s through the process of chromolithography,” Banta writes. “Advances in the technology came in 1910, with the development of two- and three-color printing processes. In general, color printing was more complicated and expensive than black and white, and its results less reliable and ‘realistic.’ Trade journals essentially considered black and white ‘preferable to lurid or unnatural color reproductions.’”

In any case, most products being advertised were not colorful. “When color began to be added to the products themselves,” Banta writes, “advances in color printing and reproduction followed. Starting in the 1920s, American consumers went from a commercial world of white towels and black Model Ts to a range of products with a fantastic palette of hues from which to choose.”

You might also like

A Paper House in Massachusetts

The 1920s Rockport cottage reflects resourceful ingenuity.

This Connecticut Mine Was Once a Prison

The underground Old New-Gate Prison quickly became “a school for crime.”

Harvard Film Archive Spotlights Japanese Director Mikio Naruse

A retrospective of the filmmaker’s works, from Floating Clouds to Flowing

Most popular

Harvard Research Funding Cuts Are Illegal, Judge Rules

The Trump administration violated the University’s First Amendment rights and must restore all funding, the court said.

Jodie Foster Honored at Radcliffe Day 2025

The actress and director discussed her film career and her transformative time at Yale.

How MAGA Went Mainstream at Harvard

Trump, TikTok, and the pandemic are reshaping Gen Z politics.

Explore More From Current Issue

Will Makris in blue checkered suit and red patterned tie standing outdoors by stone column.

A New HAA President at a Tumultuous Time

A career in higher ed inspired Will Makris to give back.

Whimsical illustration of students rushing through ornate campus gate from bus marked “Welcome New Students.”

Highlights from Harvard’s Past

The Medical School goes coed, University poet wins Nobel Prize. 

Book cover of "Black Moses" by Caleb Gayle with subtitle about ambition and the fight for a Black state.

Civil Rights in the American West

A new book chronicles one man’s quest for a Black state.