Page:Some examples of the work of American designers.djvu/30

 The Bull Durham window card which appears much reduced on the opposite page is a good example of Mr. Cooper's latest manner. Note the daring with which he has omitted the profile of the woman's face. We often read in novels, "Her face was a perfect blank. "Here is an illustration of it. The design is a study of masses, not of lines. It is also a good specimen of the characteristic Cooper lettering, which is always individual and an integral part of the composition. One cannot imagine another man doing the lettering on one of Cooper's posters. The design on the previous page, so simple that nothing is lost in its great reduction, is one of Mr. Cooper's stunts. It was made to advertise a Japanese opera singer at the Fifth Avenue Theatre, New York, and to those few of our readers who do not understand Japanese we may say that it reads "At the Fifth Avenue, Sumiko Tokao, Daughter of the Land of Flowers." In the little brown panel in the upper left corner is Mr. Cooper's monogram. The Japanese characters have been praised by natives of the land where writing is practised as a decorative as well as a utilitarian art.

This gifted man has turned out, in not so many years, hundreds of drawings, posters, magazine covers, cartoons and thumb-nail sketches. Everyone who reads the editorial page in Life knows the latter. Besides Life, he has worked mostly for the Saturday Evening Post, Collier's Weekly, the American Tobacco Company and the New York Edison Company, although many other publications and business houses of equal standing have used his "stuff."