Commercial Art

Commercial Art, artwork in a variety of forms created to stimulate interest in a product, service, or idea. Commercial art is used in many fields, such as advertising, packaging, publishing, cinema, television, and fashion, textile, interior, and industrial design. Commercial artists use painting, drawing, calligraphy, photography, typography, and most graphic-arts techniques. Their work is often reproduced as prints, and many commercial artists are trained in printing techniques.

Commercial art is as old as recorded history; signs and wall paintings that advertised shops and inns, for example, were discovered in the ancient Roman cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii. In the centuries before the development of printing, the vast majority of people could not read; hence, unmistakable images were created to indicate the nature of the services offered. For example, a pig in effigy adorned a pork-butcher's shop, and three gilded balls (derived from the escutcheon of the Florentine Medici banking family) denoted a pawnbroker. As commerce in Europe increased under the stimulus of the Industrial Revolution in the late 18th and 19th centuries, commercial art followed suit, especially in printed matter. Advertising illustration in copperplate and wood engraving appeared on coach posters, tradesmen's cards, flyers, and newspaper advertisements. Constant developments and improvements in lithography and photo-engraving produced a flood of advertising material in the form of calendars, billboard posters, and catalogues. In the late 19th century improved techniques of colour reproduction and other advances increased the importance of commercial art and raised its standards. In the hands of such Art Nouveau artists as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Alphonse Mucha, advertising posters achieved the status of fine art.

In the 20th century, commercial art has proliferated at an enormous rate. Specialists have emerged in all fields; advertising agencies have been established, offering an infinite variety of commercial art services. The results range from products of a high artistic standard to images that are fairly crude. In industrial design and the graphic arts, however, commercial art has brought to the attention of the public artwork of an outstanding quality. In fact, in the last half of the 20th century, commercial art has not followed established styles, as in the past, but rather has often created and popularized new styles.