Helmut Krone (July 16, 1925 – April 12, 1996) was an art director and is considered to be a pioneer of modern advertising.[1] Krone spent over 30 years at the advertising agency Doyle Dane Bernbach. He was the art director for the popular 1960's campaign for the Volkswagen Beetle, which featured a large unadorned photo of the car with the tiny word "Lemon" underneath it; the series of "When you're only No. 2, you try harder" advertisements for Avis, and the creation of Juan Valdez, who personified Colombian coffee. During his career, Krone won a number of awards and was inducted in both the One Club's Creative Hall of Fame and the Art Directors Hall of Fame. His work has been collected by the Museum of Modern Art and the Smithsonian.
Krone's "Lemon" ad for Volkswagen was voted the No. 1 campaign of all time in Advertising Age’s 1999 “The Century of Advertising."[2]
Krone was born in 1925 in Yorkville, Manhattan's German section. He attended Public School 77 in Queens, graduating in 1939.[3] He then enrolled at the High School for Industrial Art, where he hoped to become a product designer. When he was 21, he took his first step towards advertising, working with designer Robert Greenwell doing freelance ads for magazines. He followed naval service in World War II with postwar classes with Alexey Brodovitch and a short stint at Esquire. Then, at the age of 29, he began to work for Doyle Dane Bernbach. With the exception of a few years in the early 1970s when he attempted to start his own agency, he would spend his entire career there. When he joined DDB in 1954, he was one of four art directors at the agency. He left in 1969 to form his own agency, but returned after three years and retired as executive vice president-creative director at DDB Needham, as the agency became known after a merger in 1988.
References
- ^ http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=980DE7DF1139F930A25757C0A960958260 Helmut Krone, 70, a Creator of Ad Campaigns
- ^ http://adage.com/century/campaigns.html
- ^ http://www.enchorial.com/HelmutKroneIntro/Helmut%20Krone%20Timeline.htm Helmut Krone. The book. Graphic Design and Art Direction (concept, form and meaning) after advertising's Creative Revolution. Clive Challis The Cambridge Enchorial Press Ltd. ISBN 0954893107
External links
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