Woodward & Lothrop

Woodward & Lothrop (Woodies) was a Washington, D.C.-area department store. In the 1990s, I worked in the Woodies advertising department, first as a paste-up artist and later as a layout artist. Woodies was a huge advertiser in the Washington Post and I was responsible for laying out the "storewide" newspaper ads, which ran weekly.

Woodies also owned John Wanamakers, a Philadelphia-based retail chain. The same ads ran in both markets, with different logos and store information. We would prepare the artboards for the Philly market first, and the production work was done the old-fashioned way; no computers needed! Then the boards would be photographed and the photographic copies would be shipped overnight to the Philadelphia Inquirer. The next night the same ads would be picked up by local couriers for the Washington Post.

For a while, after working in paste up and before working as a layout artist, I had the thankless job of newspaper ad reservations manager. Which meant I had to run around the department, chasing down ads, bugging coworkers into hurrying the hell up, and making sure that the ads made it to the newspapers. I made several late-night trips to both the Washington Post and the Philadelphia Inquirer, on evenings when it got too late to send stuff via courier.

The design department, at least, had a couple Macs, so some work (such as headlines) could be done digitally. For the most part, however, ads were designed on the drawing board. Production was split among three departments: typesetting, camera room, and paste up.

Woodward & Lothrop and Wanamakers are no longer in business, although the historic flagship stores, in both D.C. and Philly, still stand.

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