It’s Personal

 

Mid Caps by Anthony Freda

 

I have had the privilege of working with some great art directors over the years, and I will discuss many of them  here in future blog posts. Today I’d like to credit the art directors and editors at Bloomberg magazines.  Frank Tagariello at Personal Finance  and Beatrice Mc Donald at Wealth Manager were among the best in my humble opinion, and I bet any illustrator who worked for them would agree. They gave artists the freedom and confidence to create imagery that rose above the realm of financial illustration and became something more, something personal. They launched a lot of careers and played an important part in pushing editorial illustration to where it is today. Just look at an illustration annual from the period and it’s filled with a disproportionate number of illustrations that were published in Bloomberg magazines. They did not require the art to be a literal, visual description of the often dry subject matter. They understood that a story about interest rates would be more interest- ing with a visually compelling, even mysterious illustration on a beautifully designed page. It draws the reader in and lets them use their own imagination, rather than spoon feeding them and under-estimating their intelligence.

This is one of my favorites of the period.  For the record, I was painting vintage cartoon characters on old books in the mid 90’s. The piece was selected to be part of American Illustration Annual #19. It was a story about Mid Cap stocks, a tip of my hat to you Frank and Bee.