William Gray Purcell (1880-1965) was an architect who was hired by Alexander Brother's Leather Belting Company. In addition to architectural duties, Purcell acted as their advertising manager from 1916 to 1918. These colorful items in this collection were possibly covers designed for trade catalogs or publications. They are all copyrighted 1917, designed in a modern style, and may have been commissioned for the company's commemorative fiftieth anniversary that year.

House Industries is a type foundry in Yorklyn, Delaware which specializes in creating fonts for billboards, greeting cards, logos and a variety of other media. The collection is a set of nine advertising cards promoting House Industries and its United typeface.

The John Gordon Rideout papers illustrate the career of John Gordon "Jack" Rideout (1898-1951), a noted industrial designer. Rideout began his career in sales, moved into advertising, and eventually opened industrial design firms in Toledo and Cleveland, Ohio. Highlights of the collection are images of Skippy Racer, perfume atomizers designed for DeVilbiss, the Shell-Back metal chair designed for Calumet Chair Company, and his classic re-design of Magnalite Cookware for the Wagner Manufacturing Company.

Commercial art, or advertising art, is art created for an enterprise to communicate reasons to buy goods and services, to create a recognizable logo, or to detail the correct performance of a task. This album consists of examples of original commercial art including lettering, letterheads, labels, a postcard, point-of-sale advertising, newspaper advertising, sketches of people, color separation examples, and a drawing of tableware.