"Picture This": Advertising and Image in the New Zealand Architectural Journals in 1965

Abstract

Throughout the 1960s advertising content in New Zealand's two leading architectural journals increased dramatically. In the case of the NZIA Journal, what was a staid professional publication without advertising in the 1950s, by the end of the 1960s carried significant advertising material including advertorial covers and the first colour centre pages. While not changing so dramatically, Home and Building nonetheless significantly increased the visibility of its advertising content over the same period. This research presents the findings of a comparative analysis of commercial advertising imagery found in the pages of Home & Building and the NZIA Journal for 1965. Throughout the 1960s the dominant publications dedicated to the activities of architects and architecture in New Zealand were the periodicals Home & Building and the NZIA Journal. From the point of view of advertisers it is important to emphasise that these periodicals were not market competitors. While the NZIA Journal was a professional journal published by the New Zealand Institute of Architects, Home & Building was published under the auspices of the NZIA, and consequentially the content differences between the two reflects a conscious effort on the part of the NZIA to distinguish between two different readerships. To a large extent this is reflected in the advertisements contained in each. The NZIA Journal shows an appeal on the part of the advertisers to architects as building professionals with its bias towards products and systems of construction. By contrast Home & Building advertising content tends to be directed towards a client market with a marked appeal to spaces of occupancy. This is exactly what we might expect to find; the professional journal directed to the work of the architect, and the more populous one appealing to potential clients. Consequentially much of the advertising content reflects this distinction. However what is less clear is the degree to which the advertising content either followed or directed this ideological editorial difference.In making a comparative analysis of the advertising material found in the pages of these two dominant forums attention has been given to the manner in which advertisers may have actively contributed to redefining the roles and responsibilities of "architect" and "client" during this period of 1960-70. I suggest that the NZIA may have had less control than it might have imagin ed over the nature of influence its two premiere publications were having on New Zealand architects and architecture in the 1960s.