2017 AIGA Medalist: Emmett McBain

McBain’s two cigarette campaigns show just how quickly African American advertising executives developed their own voice. The 1968 Newport campaign was a statement of difference, relying on recognizably African cultural artifacts. This modulated into quiet confidence by the 1972 Marlboro campaign—the Newport man had to declare he was cool, the Marlboro man just was. This evolution from focusing on the community’s relationship with white society to communicating its internal ethos and culture is also reflected in two advertisements McBain designed to promote the agencies he worked for. The text-only promotion for Vince Cullers stacks up a list of expressions that contain the word black—“blackball, black book, black boy, black eye, black friday…”—before ending with “white lies. Black is Beautiful.” A few years later, his promotion for Burrell McBain asks, “What Color is Black?” A poem below replies: “Black is the color of the feeling we share, the love we must express. The color of our strength is Black.” (The author of the poem, Barbara D. Mahone, became McBain’s third wife.)

The Black Arts Movement paralleled the rise of the African American advertising agencies—the two feeding each other. In 1974 McBain opened his own art gallery, The Black Eye, with an exhibition titled “Creative Juices” featuring the work of “mesmerizers” like the artist Calvin Jones. For the next ten years McBain focused on his art while occasionally designing for nonprofits and publishers. Even after he returned to advertising—as a senior art director, first at N.W. Ayer & Son, and then at Eisaman, Johns & Laws—art remained an essential part of his life. In 1991 he convinced Beefeater gin to fund a series of countrywide arts programs, community projects, and scholarships that promoted African American art.

By the time he succumbed to cancer in May 2012, McBain had been recognized by AIGA, the Society of Typographic Arts, and the Art Directors Clubs of Chicago and Detroit, and his papers were archived at the National Museum of American History. A few days before he died, Burrell remembers telling him, “The way you have been living... Think of it as 135 years in Emmett years!”

Timeline:

• 1935 Born in Chicago to parents Beatrice Davis and Emmett Reese McBain

• 1956 Graduates from American Academy of Art and joins Vince Cullers Advertising, the first African American-owned ad agency

• 1958 Promoted to promotion art director at Playboy Records

• 1958 Cover for Max Roach + 4 on the Chicago Scene included by AIGA in traveling exhibition on graphics in packaging

• 1959 Founds McBain Associates

• 1959 Work exhibited at the American National Exposition in Moscow

• 1963 Joins J. Walter Thompson in Detroit as art director; creates and supervises all dealer promotion for the introduction of the Ford Mustang

• 1967 Travels to East and West Africa, Europe, Mexico, and the Caribbean

• 1968 Returns to Vince Cullers Advertising as creative director

• 1968 Begins teaching at Columbia College Chicago

• 1969 Appointed associate creative director at Frank J. Corbett

• 1971 Cofounds Burrell McBain, Inc. with Tom Burrell

• 1974 Leaves Burrell McBain to move to Hyde Park; converts a mansion into an art gallery and mounts his first show, “Creative Juices”

• 1975 Creates the consultancy The Black Eye, which helps corporates and ad agencies connect with the African American community, and designs for nonprofit initiatives and publishers

• 1981 Returns to Vince Cullers Advertising as a consulting art director, designing campaigns for Kellogg’s cereal, Amoco, Illinois Bell, and Sears

• 1983 Creates Unmistakably Carefree campaign for Softsheen-Carson

• 1984 Joins N.W. Ayer & Son in Chicago as senior art director, handling John Deere, Illinois Bell, and Citicorp

• 1986 Joins Eisaman, Johns & Laws as senior art director; creates campaigns for Canadian Club whisky, Teachers scotch, and Beefeater gin

• 2012 Succumbs to cancer after being diagnosed in 1996