Mad Men and Design

One of the most interesting shows of the 21st century is one that takes place in the past. Mad Men, created by Matthew Weiner, is an American period drama that takes place through the 1960s and early 1970s. It is a show centered around advertising and the people who inhabit that strange, alcohol filled world. Therefore, it also deals greatly with design, in all its forms.

From the very beginning, with the show’s title sequence, we can already get a taste of the design and aesthetic Mad Men is going for. It features credits superimposed over a graphic animation of s businessman falling from a height, surrounded by skyscrapers with reflections of period advertising posters and billboards. This title sequence, from the get go, is an homage to Saul Bass and his skyscraper filled opening for Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest and falling man movie poster for Vertigo. Weiner, Mad Men’s creator, has actually listed Hitchcock as a major influence on the visual style of the series.

Along with the trapping plot line and characters, the period music, and the interesting showing of alcoholism and other period-centric themes, it is nice to see and appreciate the effort Mad Men puts into staying historically accurate with its depictions of design, be it either Don Draper’s apartment with Megan, filled with modernist furniture, or the agency’s advertisements, showing the evolution of graphic and visual design across a decade. Not to mention, how interesting it is to see the development of these advertisings, and how they get made, being as normally, as consumers and average people, we do not get to see that progress.

We can divide Mad Men’s appreciation of design and their historical accuracy in three distinct categories: fashion design, furniture and interior design, and visual design.

Fashion wise, as magazine Interior Design states, women’s prim shifts evolve into the kind of mod looks popularized by Courrèges. The main differences can be spotted first in Draper’s love affairs. His ex wife Betty is the embodiment of the old and out of touch 1950s, with restricting dresses, long skirts, and old school controlling of a woman’s body. Megan, Don’s secretary-turned-wife, is instead a child of the new generation, and can be spotted wearing a mod-like look, much more appealing to the evolving generation that demands their rights and is not scared of sexual freedom. Betty and Megan’s clothes divide them in more ways than one, showing the importance of costume design and fashion design. Betty’s clothes are restrictive, old-fashioned, and out-of-touch. This represents her character entirely: she is out of touch with Don, her kids, her life, and she feels as if she has no control over her choices of her life. Megan, on the other hand, with her more liberating mod look, has almost complete control over her life (at least until Don gets in her way). She believes in sexual freedom, in her rights to do whatever she wants, and she is much more accepting and warm than Betty is.

Furniture wise, the creator of the show made sure his team knew what they were doing. In an interview with Interior Design, he explains that his initial ideas for the sets were all wrong, and his team made sure to let him know of it. He says, “Yes, our set for Don and Betty Draper’s Westchester house is pretty much like houses in Baltimore. I thought it would be possible for the Drapers to have a Heywood-Wakefield dining set, but my team said, “No, no, no!” Even the color palette—I was thinking more sand and aqua, but it wasn’t. The sets needed to be not just Danish mid-century but East Coast Danish mid-century. It’s exciting to be that specific. I looked at documentaries and ads from the time period. It became this huge education.”

Graphic wise, Mad Men is a gold mine into looking at what many consider the golden age of advertising. Mad Men’s depiction of the advertising world (and, therefore, the graphic aspect of advertising) attracted not only millions of fans, but also people such as Milton Glaser, one of the legends from the graphic design world. Milton Glaser is most famous for his I Love New York logo, but he also worked in the late 1960s in advertising. So, it doesn’t come as a big surprise that Glaser actually drew the show’s final poster. Not only did the show rely on a great mind like that of Glaser’s, but also on great illustrators like Brian Sanders. Sanders tells the New York Times, “It’s a style we refer to over here in England as bubble and streak.” The article goes on to talk about the work Sanders had done in the past, which includes working for icons such as Stanley Kubrick, where he drew iconic scenes of “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

So, in conclusion to this little blog post, Mad Men relied heavily on experts to make sure every aspect of the show was true to history. We can safely say that Mad Men is not only a great TV show, but also a great and accurate depiction of what 60s design was like.