Gentlemanly Professionals and Men-about-Town: Occupational Identities Amongst London Advertising Men, 1951–67

A new image for a new profession: Self-image and representation in the professionalization of design in Britain, 1945–1960

“…As a consequence, the self-image of the designer was a composite, made up of the conflicting components of the gentleman professional and the artist. Institutions, including the CoID, RCA and SIA, sought to steer this reinvention, but were thwarted by young and emerging designers drawn into the more dynamic culture of 'creativity' that was beginning to emerge, drawing on aspects of the artistic ideal, which the SIA had self-consciously set out to reject (Nixon, 2017(Nixon, , 2016.…”

“…Sean Nixon's (2000Nixon's ( , 2003Nixon's ( , 2017Nixon's ( , 2016 observational and empirical studies of advertising agencies highlighted the behaviours, lifestyles and fashions that have steered this industry's 'semi-professional' status. For Nixon (2000), professionalization in advertising was motivated by a concern for enhanced social status and can be understood as a class-based fixation on aspiration and self-improvement among the (mostly male) executives of the London advertising elite.…”

“…By the 1970s, Perkin (1989) states, professionalism had reached a ‘plateau of attainment’, a ‘social ideal’ whereby ‘it was accepted in principle by society that ability and expertise were the only respectable justifications for recruitment into positions of authority and responsibility’ (p. 405). The period after the Second World War saw the intensification of professionalization in new industries and in new locations in Britain (Nixon, 2016; Perkin, 1989; Sparke, 1983). The post-war period was also marked by the importation of these models of professionalism into new spheres of British working life, as the ‘new’ professions, which included design and advertising, grew in response to the rise of a more vibrant and dynamic consumer culture (Maude and Lewis, 1952; Mort, 2010; Nixon, 2016).…”

“…The period after the Second World War saw the intensification of professionalization in new industries and in new locations in Britain (Nixon, 2016; Perkin, 1989; Sparke, 1983). The post-war period was also marked by the importation of these models of professionalism into new spheres of British working life, as the ‘new’ professions, which included design and advertising, grew in response to the rise of a more vibrant and dynamic consumer culture (Maude and Lewis, 1952; Mort, 2010; Nixon, 2016).…”

“…Frank Mort and Sean Nixon have explored the appropriation of this ideal by men working in advertising and other creative fields in post-war London (Mort, 2010; Nixon, 2016). Andrew Saint (1983) similarly describes the emergence of the ‘kindly, alluring, essentially harmless but increasingly anachronistic concept of the architect as a gentleman’ that typified the profession in 1950s Britain (p. 97).…”