Posted on Sun, Apr 08, 2012
I love Julie's. They do wonderful things for women who have had some bad cards dealt to them.
I sill feel fortunate to have gotten the opportunity to work on this account. I got it by being in the right place at the right time. A firend of mine used to work there and had gotten laid off. His old boss had sent him an email asking him if he wanted to do the graphics as a freelancer and he felt he really didnt have time so he asked me if I was interested. I of course was.
When I first went to their web site which we still havent changed yet, I saw this for their identity.
Everyone seemed fine with it. But me. So we worked together on a lot of different fundraising projects, and various design projects until one day I just had had enough of the flat butterfly. It just didnt really have a lot of life to it. So I roughed out a couple of ideas and showed them to my client Bob Monahan. He seemed to like them but needed to show them to the Sisters who are the people who started Julie's.
He told me they said nothing. And months went by and one day I got a request for some little Thank you cards. And in the request was let's start using the new logo. So I called and he said he felt that if we just started using it the sisters would come around and accept it. Sure enough I gat a request for letterheads last week.
I still love Julie's!
Posted on Sun, Apr 08, 2012
In the days when Tweeter was dying its slow painful death we dreamed up all of these plans to try and save it. One of them was to revise their loyalty plan.
We had a couple of pretend agencies come in and pitch us these loyalty ideas. Which was fine but when you asked them how the plan worked they didnt have any answers. Really good loyalty programs are fantastic. Hallmark has a great one that keeps driving peoiple to the store. Unfortunately loyalty programs for high end electronics stores are hard for me to embrace because how many tvs is someone going to buy? Could be me.
This logo is the design of a new logo for the old Tweeter loyalty program. We did some direct marketing concepts, we did some actual thinking on how to revize the existing plan and finally did nothing but this cool logo.
Posted on Sun, Apr 08, 2012
This client is tough. He is one of those I dont know what I want until you show me something and even then it will probably be beaten to a pulp. We have worked with him off and on for many years. More off than on. I could tell you how this business had evolved but this is really about the art direction on a postcard.
Having done enough direct marketing to have a little knowledge it really can be very easy. There are three things that determine what works for direct mail.
1. Audience, the list. I figured he had that part because he wouldnt mail to people who didnt have any interest. Would he?
2. The offer. Lets face it if you have a shitty offer no human is really going to do anything.
3. Creative. Now real direct experts will tell you that the real purpose of creative is to get someone to look at the piece, not to get them to buy it.
So I bet I spent a day getting this postcard so the client would finally sign off on it. And this was a Sunday because of course it was late. And somehow and I am never sure how this happens two weeks later I get emails asking me where we are at and then a barrage of changes.
Wouldnt marketing be just a little bit easier if people started using a littl common sense as opposed to their I am right at all times attitude? I am just saying.
Posted on Sun, Apr 08, 2012
This project came in via email. Never a word was spoken. I was asked
“Want a quick turnaround job?”.
My Answer “How fast?”
He said “A couple of days.”
I took it.
I fished through some emails and found a brief, kind of. And found the concept they had created.
It’s a little direct mail postcard trying to get customers to buy a web based loyalty program for their radio stations. The image I posted was one of three I presented via email. They bought one of the other ideas. This one is still my favorite.
If you want to see the other ideas give me a call.
Oh yeah the product is really called Stickyfish.
Posted on Sun, Apr 08, 2012
So this is a idea that I am only taking part of the credit for. No I am not even doing that. It was the clients. He wanted to do a 3D idea for a trade show they were going to.
I had never done 3D and new absolutely nothing about it. So after doing internet searches I found a guy in New York who was the king of 3D graphic design and he told me about this company in Nashville named Paper Optics. They really are the company that makes all of those 3D glasses 3D mailers all kinds of great stuff.
Now this is one of the things that drives me bonkers about clients. And it must be my fault because I am so anxious to start the design that I assumed he wanted to take his powerpoint presentation and hand out 3d glasses. He even looked at the multiple layouts I did of the glasses.
So about half way through the time he says we dont want 3D glasses we really just want a thing to be inserted into the bag and give to all attendees at the show. 
I took the graphics we had already developed for the companies web site and incorporated them into this image and sent it to Paper Optics for some input. They told me they could make it 3D and only need to change the background color. Easy enough.
Posted on Sun, Apr 08, 2012
This is another one of those I had an idea.
Our project for Sony was to create a brochure that would show how much better hi-def would be than normal big box tv. There was also the change in the actual shape of the tv image. So I had this idea of showing an image through a die cut transluscent area and when it was opened it showed what the image would look like in the new letterbox shape. This was when these TVs were about $10,000.
I had done this mini layout that was only about 3" wide and had a cover that was made from bleached corrugated cardboard. But it still was the same idea. I showed it to my boss Ed Bernard who showed to to his boss Chuck Kushell. Chuck OKd it except for the cardboard. The life of an art director. No bleached corrugated cardboard.
Things take a long time to get through big agencies with big clients and I had gone on to bigger and better things before this got produced so to give credit where credit id due, John Vient finished the art direction on this. He did a great job on it except I never was that big on the metalic graphic he replaced the corrugated cardboard so I changed it.
An art director is never satisfied.
Posted on Fri, Apr 06, 2012
blog
This is a logo design I did via email. That seems to happen quite a bit. I dont get many briefs anymore. I grew up without them and now it seems like the whole idea of briefs is a lost thought. But I do get titles of products:
Advanced Management Platform.
Now I know there are people who can figure stuff like this out but for the life of me I am a little light. So I go back to emails and sometimes I just guess. This one I got kind of lucky with. I stared and stared trying to figure out a way to make the letters form a shape. And them I had one of those lightbulb moments when the lowercase a and the p with a short descender. It worked. Love the actual little letterforms.
Along with this I did five other roughs and if you call me or send me an email I'll show you the other ideas.
Posted on Mon, Oct 17, 2011
The assignment was to create a brand advertising campaign that showed the importance of being partners with Scudder. The audience was the financial services companies that managed 403B plans.
Our concept was to show different situations that showed how crazy it would be to do things with only half of the required pieces. We tried to show clever scenes that showed some humor when you first looked at the ads.
We art directed all of the photgraphy for the advertising campaign. There are two other ads not shown here.One with a guy trying to ride a tandem bicycle up a hill and a drummer playing with one stick.
I'd be happy to show them to you if you are interested.
Posted on Sun, Oct 16, 2011
Click on the image.
This project came in via email. Never a word was spoken. I was asked
“Want a quick turnaround job?”.
My Answer “How fast?”
He said “A couple of days.”
I took it.
It’s a little postcard trying to get customers to but a web based loyalty program for their radio stations. The image I posted was one of three I sent via email. They bought one of the other ideas. This one is still my favorite.
Oh yeah the product is really called Stickyfish.
Posted on Sun, Oct 16, 2011
I was the creative director at Tweeter and they were a publicly traded company. That means they had to have an annual report. This is the first one I designed for them I also art directed all of the images in it from several shoots. Id be happy to show you the printed sample.