“I am the luckiest person in this ride called life.”
Life has been incredibly kind to me. Early in my life I was lucky to be on the right high school baseball team that won the championship for the state of California. Lucky to quarterback the Pasadena Junior College football team in the Rose Bowl. Lucky to be chosen by the creative director at Young & Rubicam Advertising, New York, to be his assistant. To also have lived in The City by the bay during the 60’s.
None of this was because I deserved anything on merit. It was simply because I had blind assed luck. To be at the right place at the right time.
Example: When I came out from New York to Art Direct for Foote, Cone and Belding, San Francisco, I wound up editing the newsletter for the Artist and Art Director’s Club of San Francisco.
I decided to get designers to design each issue. And who would I start with?
Marget Larsen, of course.
Marget was the hottest designer in town and the hottest woman on the planet. I was hopelessly in love with her but about 347th in line.
Marget designed our first issue and I gulped at the price tag attached, (With Marget design always trumped cost.) We set out to produce it anyway. We wound up silk screening it on the floor of the agency at night and begging printing from a friendly printer then hand folding 500 copies to the membership.
I wished I had saved the issue but you can imagine it was not to be topped. Such was working with Marget. She always shot for the stars and if you wanted to be lucky, you hitched a ride. God, I loved her. She was like many of the designers SF boasted of. Nick Sidjakov, Tom Kamafuji, Bruce Butte, Lowell Hererro, Jerry Berman to name just a very few. Follow them around and hope they dropped a few crumbs.
Luckily, they were generous as well as great.
Jack Allen