People know me as a brand expert, author, and teacher. That’s true today, but it wasn’t always so. I started my career as a graphic designer, illustrator, and copywriter, working on whatever jobs I could get, from whatever clients I could get. It was hard, often unremunerative work, that is, when I could find work. Thankfully, my wife supported me unconditionally during my early period of non-success.
I have a vivid memory of sitting in our downsized duplex on the bare floor, no furniture, no food, no clients. Our baby lay sleeping in the other room. The rent was due in a week, a whopping $165. We didn’t have it. In the eleventh hour I lucked into a meeting with the marketing director of the local independent bank. Figuring that a bank must have money, I dared to ask $50 each for nine newspaper ads. I cranked them out the same afternoon, netting $450, the most I’d ever gotten from a design job. I took the money straight to the bank and bought more design materials. Wherever there were nine ads, I thought, there might be more.
This first little campaign won national awards, and soon, more work from other clients. Within two years I was profiled in the leading trade magazine and work began to flow more regularly. In 1985, my wife and I packed up and moved the studio to Silicon Valley to join the personal computer revolution.
So far I’ve spent 60 years in design (yikes), from my training at Art Center College of Design to my busy days as a studio owner, to my years as a magazine publisher and finally as the designer of businesses, books, and masterclasses.
But in this Substack I want to focus on my studio days, a 25-year period when my staff and I produced thousands of projects for every kind of company imaginable—from local shops to the world’s largest corporations. I regarded every job as a potential masterpiece, no matter how small it seemed. I started my career broke, made some money, almost went broke again, made more money, and went broke again before moving into a steady role as a writer and teacher. All in all, a beautiful career.
I dug out the photos of my studio’s work and selected several dozen examples. I chose these particular images because a) I had them, b) they’d won awards, and c) they still seem to hold up, at least to my eye. I’m sharing them mostly for my students at LEVEL C, the brand mastery program I founded with Andy Starr, but also for serious students of graphic design, copywriting, and brand strategy. I hope to show that the ideas, principles, and theories that appear in my books and in Level C’s classes have their roots in a real-life career. In other words, I’m preaching what I’ve practiced. Enjoy!
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