You needed a human artist then. You need one now.

You're not going to believe what I found comparing 1930s French drug ads to 2026 Super Bowl pharma commercials.

Short version: as much as you needed a human artist then, you need one now. For the exact same reason.

Let me explain.

In the 1930s, before modern drug regulation, the medicine market was flooded. Small labs could make and sell almost anything. Hundreds of products, barely different from each other, all fighting for the same prescription.

When your product is a commodity, design becomes the only edge

So labs hired real artists. And the work is unhinged in the best way. I pulled just a few from my research. But my favorite is the insomnia one. “Nuits Blanches” (French: sleepless nights) and it's just a single wide eye, lit cold blue, refusing to close.

A few things I found going down this hole

• These weren't public ads. They were mailed to French doctors from 1933 to 1977. You weren't selling to a sick person. You were selling to a tired doctor between appointments. So the work had to be good enough to stop someone who'd seen everything.
• One of those pharma illustrators was Victor Vasarely, the father of Op Art. Before the famous optical illusions, he spent the early 1930s in Paris paying rent designing pharmaceutical posters. (Fun fact: he studied medicine first, then dropped it for design. I failed an English test for psychiatry and ended up here. Apparently it's a pipeline.)
• The weirdness had a business reason. This was a crowded market full of hard-to-differentiate products. The design WAS the strategy. The gargoyle wasn't art for art's sake. It was a moat.

Now look at 2026

A weight-loss drug as a calm aerial shot of a man in a golden field. An allergy spray as a smiling golfer on a sunny course. Soft light, happy people, life after relief. These ran during the Super Bowl. The most expensive ad real estate on earth.

Same situation as in 1930s.

A flooded market. Except now anyone can ship a product in a weekend and generate a “clean, modern” brand in 20 minutes. Which means clean and modern is the new commodity.

And AI is exceptional at clean and modern. It gives you the average of everything it has seen. The safest, most likely version.

The average has never made anyone stand out

The labs in 1930 knew this with no algorithm and no Figma. When everyone has the same product, the only thing left is how you make people feel. A gargoyle is a decision. A point of view.

A person who looked at a boring drug and chose to make you uncomfortable so you'd never forget it.

You needed a human artist then. You need one now ¯\(ツ)/¯