Like many Americans, I struggled after the 2016 election to understand how enough of us could vote for Donald Trump to make him president. From the outset he struck me as a con — a “snake-oil salesman,” many called him — and I’ve struggled since to understand his continued appeal to a sizable segment of the population.

Throughout his first campaign Trump demonstrated himself to be unfit for office. Right out of the chute, in a speech launching his candidacy, he condemned immigrants from our neighbor to the South: “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. … They’re sending people that have lots of problems … They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” In the following months he mocked a disabled journalist, denigrated Senator John McCain for having been captured in Vietnam, boasted of grabbing women by the pussy, and more.

So when he won, I was gobsmacked.

continue reading… “Enlighten Us”

The essence of creativity is the linking of disparate facts and ideas — making connections that no one’s thought of. Arthur Koestler, author of the seminal work The Act of Creation, defined creativity as “the defeat of habit by originality.”

As a designer and art director I have long been intrigued by the alchemical effect of adding one image to another in order to produce a third image. When such a union — or juxtaposition — of two or more elements is successful, the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts, often due to the enigmatic, true-but-not-true nature of the image.

Here’s an early piece of this sort, created by making photocopies of images I found in a library, trimming one out and pasting it atop the other.

continue reading… “Juxtaposition”

I recently swam farther than I ever had before.

For the past 13 years I’ve done a “birthday swim,” my age times 100 meters. More than once I exceeded my yearly goal by a few laps — like an extra candle on a birthday cake, a little something to grow on. This year, however, I felt pretty good when I’d logged the requisite 7,300m, and there still was time before the pool closed, so, to quote Forrest Gump, “I figured since I’d gone this far, I might as well turn around and just keep on going.”

continue reading… “Endurance”

For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved music — pop music, mostly, and rock ’n’ roll, though my interests have expanded over the years to embrace most genres.

I’ve also, of course, long been enamored by the commercial arts — record, book and magazine covers, and as I’ve said elsewhere in these pages, advertising, publication design, and much more.

Back when I first had the capability to merge these two loves — in fact, about the time I began working as a designer for record companies — I discovered the joy of mixtapes, and started compiling selections of music, coming up with titles, and creating graphics for them.

My earliest cassettes were distillations of various genres. Among them was Granddads, a 1980 mix of the earliest creators of rock ’n’ roll, including Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley; and Don’t Forget the Motor City, a collection of my favorite Motown songs. Others focused on big band music, piano jazz, and blues. A few featured instruments: drums, harmonica and saxophone.

continue reading… “Mixtapes”

Advertising was the area of commercial art that drew me into the field. Growing up, many of my friends’ dads worked in advertising, some as art directors. In college I majored in advertising, and my first “real” summer job was in an ad agency, as was my first gig out of school. I’ve always loved using both images and words to impart a message.

I have not, however, had the opportunity to do a lot of advertising over the years. My career has taken me into graphic design – branding and packaging and publication design specifically – and though I believe all of the commercial arts are intimately related, I think of graphic design as being somewhat more about form, and about the visual more than the verbal; in that sense it’s more akin to fine art, and further from marketing.

Last year, fate presented me with an extraordinary opportunity to co-create an ad campaign, and the experience proved gratifying in a bunch of ways.

continue reading… “This.”

“There’s a fog upon L.A.,” George Harrison incants, “and my friends have lost their way.”

It happens, fog in L.A.

Cars happen here, too, by the millions. Most of them still generate exhaust, and those emissions, mixed with smoke from refineries and factories, trucks and container ships, and myriad other sources — added to the fog — produce a noxious haze. When the sun bakes that mix, we get smog.

Smog is not a good thing, on the whole, but it helps create some of the most dramatic light of any city in the world — light that is, according to author Lawrence Weschler in a 1998 New Yorker article titled “L.A. Glows,” “the defining character of the place — the soul of the place.” Weschler, a New Yorker born in L.A., elaborates, “That light: the late-afternoon light of Los Angeles — golden pink off the bay through the smog and onto the palm fronds. A light I’ve found myself pining for every day of the nearly two decades since I left Southern California.”

Countless artists, filmmakers and writers have been awed by the light here and have paid tribute in their work. Several friends of mine, in fact, have produced wonderful pieces that capture the magic of our light. Contemplating those artists’ works inspired me to gather their images, and seek out others, with the idea of compiling a book. The subject is certainly deserving.

continue reading… “Land of Light”

At this writing, in April 2020, not a soul on the planet would describe our situation as normal. It’s anything but. The world is under siege by a virulent pathogen. We’re all “social distancing” and “sheltering in place,” that is, hunkered down at home for weeks on end, leaving only if our work is deemed “essential,” or if we’ve run out of food. Every state in the union has declared a State of Emergency, the first time that’s ever happened.

As a result of this contagion, our economy has taken a mighty punch to the gut. Seventeen million people have applied for unemployment in the recent three-week span and Congress just passed a third relief bill, worth more than $2 trillion — the biggest such effort ever — and leaders already acknowledge they’ll need to do much more. The stock market sank nearly 30% in little more than a month. The International Monetary Fund predicts that the coronavirus pandemic is likely to trigger the worst recession since the Great Depression.

It’s horrendous beyond words, but even prior to this year, the world was spinning a bit wobbly on its axis. Over the past few decades, Americans have become more partisan politically, and thanks to cable news and social media, debate on issues large and small is more acrimonious. The ranks of billionaires, and the extreme wealth they hold collectively, has grown steadily over the years, yet on any given night a half-million Americans sleep on the streets. A couple years ago 47,000 Americans died from an overdose of opioid drugs and, tragically, even more than that took their own lives — among them, my dear brother-in-law. As a recent New York Times editorial put it, “over the past half century, the fabric of American democracy has been stretched thin.” Topping the crises we faced prior to COVID-19 is climate change. Even as the current administration dials back environmental regulations and lends continued support to fossil-fuel industries, the giant investment firm JP Morgan warned in a January 2020 report, “We cannot rule out catastrophic outcomes where human life as we know it is threatened.”

continue reading… “Return to Normalcy”

A&M Records by the mid-1970s had become the world’s largest independent record company, and it continued to grow rapidly. A lot of music was being released, and ambitious marketing efforts were undertaken to promote it. To help ease the burden of in-house designers to produce a growing volume of advertising and merchandising, in addition to album and single packages, the label’s art director (and my former college instructor), Roland Young, enlisted me to become the company’s first advertising art director.

It was for me a dream job, melding my lifelong passion for music with advertising, which I’d studied at Art Center College of Design. (Just the year before I’d moved back to Los Angeles from New York, where I’d worked for an ad agency.)

It was a spectacular opportunity and tremendous fun. Roland was a favorite teacher in school, and I learned a ton under his tutelage at A&M. The assignments came fast and furious. I was encouraged to try stuff, and there was a budget for nearly anything I thought to do. Additionally, I worked in the art department with talented and creative folks, and everyone I met throughout the company was friendly and supportive.

Mostly I did trade and consumer ads, but was given a couple packaging assignments along the way. Several months into my tenure, a plum project was handed to me, art directing a newspaper, which Creative Director Chuck Casell titled Off the Record. He debuted the journal’s mission on its cover:

continue reading… “Off the Record”

Back in the day, LPs were advertised in large groups, in newspaper ads and mailers for record clubs (“12 Records for Just $2.85!”) and on record sleeves inside album jackets.

For maximum impact in these contexts, an album cover was distilled to its essence – a core image, often vignetted, and type proportionately much larger than on the actual 12-inch cover. These redesigned covers were referred to as album minis.

Over the past few years I’ve been asked to design “digital covers” for collections of music available exclusively online – through Spotify, Apple Music, etc. As these covers are viewed primarily on mobile devices, they too must convey an essence of the artist and music, and all the type must be legible, at small sizes.

continue reading… “Album Minis”

Newspapers are ubiquitous  in movies and television. As props they are used to illustrate and dramatize story points, and to inform the audience that something occurred on a specific date. They’re often pictured in more incidental ways, too — folded up under a businessman’s arm, for instance, or stacked on a desk, coffee table or office credenza. Though news increasingly is consumed electronically, the significance of a printed newspaper onscreen is immediate.

If a newspaper is shown in a documentary, it’ll be a real paper. In dramas, comedies and other fictional genres, however, articles appearing in a newspaper are made up to convey, enforce or augment the story line. To be convincing, a prop newspaper must look legitimate.

As a prop designer I’ve created quite a few newspapers — some from the ground up, some reconstructed from scans, microfilm and online sources, and some hybrids. Here are a few of them. continue reading… “Actual Fake News”