Camel brand cigarettes were created by R.J. Reynolds in 1913 as the world’s first packaged cigarette — previous cigarettes were rolled by the smoker. With almost half of a billion packs of Camel cigarettes sold in their first year, the brand (and it’s advertising) were extremely common, especially in the 1930s, 40s and 50s.

About the Wall Advertisement

I have tried to recreate a wall advertisement, following a prototype photo as closely as possible. The ad is painted directly onto the brick side of a building. The photo I used for reference is toward the back of the book, New York, Empire City: 1920-1945.

The ad features the Camel slogan, “Let Up… Light Up a Camel”.  This would be most appropriate for the late 1930s into the early to mid 1940s. Other Camel slogans, such as, “I’d Walk a Mile for Camel” were more popular, but in this case, I wanted to stay true to the prototype.

If you’re modeling a later era, consider making this a “ghost” sign by applying to your structure and then lighting airbrushing the building color over it.

My reference photo also included a painted on frame, giving the sign the appearance of being surrounded by molding. This was a common approach, especially by the General Outdoor Advertising Company — one of the more heavily used advertising agencies during that time period.

In the same book, there are several other photos showing these faux-frame ads.  The ads are all different sizes and appear to be scaled to fit the building (and available space) they are applied to.  The frame borders are scaled to match the overall size of each ad. Meaning, the frame is always equally proportionate so the border thickness was variable. Therefore, it would be appropriate to scale this ad down before using as the proportions would remain the accurate.

The prototype Camel ad is several stories high and takes up the upper half of the structure. Obviously, the copy I have is in black and white, so I’ve created this in two different color schemes to choose from or use on different structures.

Using the Wall Ad

Since this type of ad would be painted onto the building surface, the best (and only) way to use these is to create your own decals. In this case, you’d want to use white decal paper.

First, save the version of the sign you’d like to use and then follow the directions provided in our Make Your Own Decals article. Typically, to save an image from the Web, right-click your mouse on the image and select “Save As”, “Save Target As” or something similar.  The specific process for saving the image may be slightly different depending on your individual Internet browser and setup.