1‑Alan Hayes
Alan wrote:
Great stories. I’m sorry to admit that I don’t always read everything, and I missed the train of softball anecdotes.
For years, I was the pitcher for a series of terrible teams from Meltzer, Lennen & Newell and Wilton, Coombs and Colnett. As Meltzer’s Pride, we decided to display our macho posture by picking pink and purple as the team colors. For one game, the agency girls formed a cheering section and offered this memorable yell:
“Pink and purple, purple and pink. We’re great, you stink!”
(This above, is another ad-agency-softball-after-work story — it is long, I will post it in January and include another from Martin Russel who played for the WC&C team.)
2- Ward Schumaker
I have no photos of us but here’s a photo from most recent show:
Twenty feet of “I Need Do Nothing” acrylic on panels, 10 of them, 2ft x 2ft each, from my Spring 2021 show “A Wall of Words” at Jack Fischer Gallery (San Francisco)
3‑David Alcorn
In the fall of 1968 I was introduced to Mr Hap Klopp. Hap had just bought three retail shops called The North Face. The San Francisco shop was in North Beach.
I was a recent art school graduate and was working for Dan Bonfigli as my first job out of college in Dan’s package design firm.
I had been told that Hap needed a logo and other materials designed. This would be my first freelance job. Hap and I met for lunch a couple of times at Clown Ally over burgers. Hap told me about his plans to start manufacturing high end alpine gear. At that point there were five seamstresses on sewing machines in the basement of the San Francisco store! We talked about his vision and the one thing he didn’t want were pine trees!! Sierra Designs were already using pine trees in their logo. That was it! I had the job!
I worked on it at home for about a week. I did a lot of thumbnail sketches, like points on a compass, etc. At 21 years old, I hadn’t traveled much. I hadn’t seen the famous mountains of the world. But I was a kid from California and had camped many times in Yosemite. I started thinking about a mountain silhouette. El Capitan wouldn’t work, it faces south. But Half Dome faced north!! Then I played with typography. Suddenly, I had it. I was so convinced that I didn’t present any other candidates!! My enthusiasm must have rubbed off on Hap!! That was it!! No branding firms, no focus groups, no test marketing!!
The logo has endured for over 53 years now without the slightest tweaking. It has become one of the most ubiquitous and well recognized logos in the world.
After 50 years: left to right, Hap Klopp, David Alcorn, and Mark Erickson, the first product designer at The North Face.
And although Hap sold the company many years ago to VF Corporation, in 2018 they honored me with a display of some of my original designs work for the company. Not computer aided graphics back then as you well know. And after fifty years, they even had me do some design work for the belated 2020 Tokyo Olympics!!
I feel that I was very blessed. And I have seen the logo all over the world. But the part that I’m the most proud of is that even through many changes in corporate management, there was never an effort to modify my original design.
David
4‑Dave Sanchez
Ann,
OK, well here it goes:
I must have had an early interest in advertising. My mom kept an ad I created for Coke Cola when I was about 8 or 10. When I was at the Academy of Art my main courses were in fine art, but I took Jack Allen’s class and was hooked. I built my “portfolio” in his class and left the Academy to seek my fortune (ha, ha). Jack called me a year later when I was at KPIX and asked if I was interested in joining Y&R, he had just been made Creative Director. I said YES!! I had just gotten Mik Kitagawa a job at KPIX art department but thought maybe he could join Y&R also. I helped him pull his portfolio together and we both got the job at Y&R (Jack said: “two for the price of one”)
I was a “print” Art Director (in those days TV was for TV Art Directors). After 8 years Y&R SF was closing and I was asked to join Y&R LA. They paid to send me and my wife to LA to look for a place to live. It was a time when there was a smog alert. I couldn’t stand it, and thought I never would let my kids live in that. There was a newly-combined agency called Gross, Pera, and Rockey. I interviewed with Curt Fields and Martin Rockey and got the job. This was my big break in television. They had great accounts and won many new ones: PSA airlines, McCormic & Schilling, Foster Farms, Toyota Dealers, Treesweet, Royal Cruise Lines, etc., etc., many food accounts. I worked on every account. I loved it! PSA was a lot of fun working with the comedian Ronny Schell. I stayed there 8 years and left when they lost PSA, Toyota (National in LA) and additional accounts. I joined J.Walter Thompson, but was there less than a year when I heard about Ketchum looking for creative. I presented my work and was hired. Over 8 years I developed my “package goods” experience, Hunt Foods (with Tony Randall), Treesweet (with OJ Simpson), The Beef Board (with James Garner), The Potato Board, Lindsay Olives, BofA, Crown Z, Clorox, and others I can’t remember now. I was now a VP “Associate Creative Director” and had won major ad awards. Lately the creative department was making staff changes (which I didn’t like) and they decided to let me go. I was hurt, but I was no longer happy at Ketchum. I had been doing moon-lighting with David Brown, an ex-writer from Ketchum, working on the Frexenet Sparking Wine business. They had two US agencies but wanted to select one agency. David and I were creating ads they liked so the Ferrer family from Spain decided to have David create an in-house agency. When I left Ketchum, David and I did the Freixenet/Gloria Ferrer advertising (which grew over the years to over 9 more products). David became the Friexenet Ad Manager/Creative honcho. I opened Sanchez & Associates in 1988. I had the Freixenet business, the Supersoil account, and picked up all three Bay Area and LA Race Horse Tracks accounts. Writer Mickey Lonchar joined me and we became Sanchez & Lonchar, we picked up more accounts and after a few years AE Dennis Flynn joined us and we were now Sanchez, Lonchar & Flynn Advertising and Design. It was fun, and successful. After 10 years the partnership split up (under good terms), we sold the building we had, and I opened Red Wagon Advertising & Design. For another 10 years everything was good until the BUSH DEPRESSION struck and the clients pulled back their billing. I thought 50 years was long enough, being 72…so I closed the shop in 2010 and retired. I couldn’t have picked a more satisfying career. The creative people I worked with: Photographers, Artists, Directors, Writers, were a lot of fun and totally rewarding in many ways. But retiring is a lot of work.
Ann, Dick: now you see why I stalled. Pick and choose what you want to include. It won’t hurt my feelings. I just wish I could have included some print and TV examples.
Merry Christmas and a Happy 2022.
Warm regards, and memories.
Dave
Dave, Your wish:
Ann
5‑Charlie Sweeny
CHARLIE SWEENY
Art Director, Cunningham & Walsh/SF, 1982 – 1984
After 30 years creative-directing for mega-agencies in Advertising – a decade in Private Service working with UHNW clients, Charlie now lives in L.A. slingin’ pot part-time with Eaze – and produces experiential sound and music shows as AUDIO SHAMAN, performing through the immersive QUADSONIC 360° sound system, and his HIPTRIP production group. www.audioshaman.com
6‑Jed Falby
On 9/20/21 6:04 AM, Jed Falby wrote:
1960 was a long time ago …
As a Brit working in New York (Madison Avenue!) San Francisco seemed as far away as London. But Y&R thought I should join Hanley Norins in his San Francisco creative ‘Hot Shop’ as “the TV Man”. What a whirlwind that turned out to be. Local accounts like Kaiser and Langendorf (bread!) and the California Wine board but the National Prize winners were the series of films we did for GoodYear. I still remember working with Mike Slosberg facing an impossible four-page imperative of all the facts that we had to include in our thirty-second time frame. “I know!” said Mike (tossing the four pages aside) “Let’s do it non-verbal!”.
Sounds simple when I say that now — but back then it was unheard of. It was Mike who invented “When-Snow-says-No — Go — Go — Goodyear!” With Hanley Norin’s enthusiastic support suddenly we were running a major National Account from San Francisco (It’s a long, long way from Alcatraz to Akron, Ohio) There were so many good talented people working on the account that I can’t name them all (Hi Gerry, Hi Herb,Hi Norm, Hi Lear).
TV is hard to show on the Geezer site but I thought you might like this escape into print for Mike and I and Lowell Herrero.
Cheers! Jed
Jed has written a book: “Le Train de Michel”.
Michel Hollard, of the French Resistance, is known as: the man who saved London”.
7‑Tim Price
Life is better off the grid on the Sea of Cortez.
Tim Price
Senior VP FCB SF
8‑Steve Rustad
Here’s a photo of me circa 1982 doing a camp promo for a Bumblebee Tuna trade ad that spoofed brand x tuna. Also, here is a print ad I art directed about that same time. Mac Churchill was the Creative Director and Jim Sanderson wrote the copy. And — a recent photo of me with the Gunboat mascot character I created for a toy store that I helped rebrand as Fundemonium.
9‑Richard Wilson
Richard Wilson: Forty years of graphic deign, illustration and cartooning in the San Francisco Bay Area and Santa Cruz.
Photo circa 1982
10-Bob Porter
Here’s a photo of me doing what I do these days…stand at an easel in the studio. After four years at Art Center, I spent most of my career sitting at a typewriter, so the studio feels pretty good. I’m an Artist Member of the California Art Club, and once in a while show at Studio Gallery on Pacific in the City.
Happy Holidays!
Bob Porter
11-Ed & Mary Ann Diffenderfer
67th wedding anniversary on July10 The Diffenderfers are a talented team. Geezers’ Gallery posted Ed’s illustrations at: https://geezersgallery.com/eds-story/
Mary Ann met Ed while attending the California College of Arts and Crafts. She became a teacher in Oakland and then a fine artist: (portraits and monotype prints) and then a novelist (pen name: Marianne Gage): ”Private Faces”, “The wind Came Running,”, “Putneyville Fables” and “All Kinds of Beauty” and now Mary Ann is again showing her monotype prints in Lafayette, CA..
12-Pat Grant Porter
The best part of my two years in San Francisco, was being there. It’s the most beautiful city in the USA.
I was fresh out of Pratt, hauling an oversized portfolio full of mostly mediocre work up and down the hills, wearing the required high heels and white gloves. The art directors were unfailing kind and helpful, and a few even gave me work. I had been told that S.F. folks were especially friendly and it was true. Things improved when Dick Moore and Fred Meinke decided to give me space and some paste up work in their studio. They told me that their clients behaved better in the presence of a nice young lady. So I dressed in my best, cleaned up my language, and did paste ups…at half the speed of Fred. The beauty of San Francisco attracted many top illustrators. After I read it had only two percent of the illustration market, and New York had fifty per cent, I knew it was time to go home. I guess I was always a Jersey Girl…loving my mother’s cooking, my father’s Chrysler, the Shore, illustrating children’s books. Meeting Maurice Patrick Porter. But that’s another story.
I only had a few years in San Francisco, but now, 60 years later, I still do California dreaming, the Golden Gate Bridge, Crab Louie, the sound of the cable cars.…Ning a ning a NING NING!
13-Gale McKee
14-Chuck Pyle
Hey! I retired from the Academy in June!!!.
chuck
15-Brian Barnes
I spent many enjoyable years as an AD with Botsford, Constantine & McCarty [ later Ketchum ] in the 1960’s into the 70’s. Under Jerry Huff I was assigned to the marquee Japan Air Lines account. In 1969, JAL was preparing to take delivery of their first Boeing 747. The image shows flight attendants with myself taken inside the 747 interior mockup at Boeing, Everett WA, we used for introductory advertising photography. Other airlines with pending 747 deliveries also utilized this same mockup for their purposes with each allowed one week for their proprietary design fit-outs then afterward swiftly removed for the next to follow. A revolution for air travel and so happy to have been there.
Brian Barnes
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