Playboy Magazine’s “What Sort Of Man Reads Playboy” advertisements from the 1960s and 1970s illustrate continuities and discontinuities between pre-internet and contemporary copywriting and design.

Before the Internet, as now, images accomplished most of the work. Playboy’s advertisements relied on a striking photograph to attract and keep the attention of the reader. On the other hand, the image is much larger than is usual today, which also causes the copy to be less prominent than usually would be the case on today’s web pages.

Before the Internet, as now, copy was written carefully to appeal to target readers. Playboy’s advertisements were calculated to accomplish three objectives:

1. Increase readership
2. Create a “Playboy” demographic
3. Overcome stigmatization for consumers of such “pornographic” reading material

However, the copy is much wordier than today’s internet practices. Most web designers would doubt that readers might actually read the 78-85 words contained in the 5-6 lines of the Playboy ads. Moreover, the copy’s unctuous tone reveals as much about the history of cultural assumptions as it does about contemporary copywriting, which gravitates toward telegraphic irony rather than middlebrow turgidity.