Meat puppet couple now hawking instant coffee in tiny plastic cartridges

This is a follow-up to a recent blog post: EXPOSED: Stock Photography Models which was intended to bring light to the slinky and unsavory world of stock photography models.

Here is "white, handsome, middle-age man, with light beard" with what appears to be his regular modeling accomplice, "white, middle-aged blonde woman, with really white teeth."

Yesterday they pushing AARP memberships, today coffee, and tomorrow – who knows? Frozen burritos? Umbrella hats?

–Doug.

Daily Vitamins

A few years ago, from a professional standpoint, I had an extremely important decision to make. I could either continue as a hands-on designer or take on more of a creative management role. 

Both directions were extremely appealing. Management offered the potential for more financial rewards but as Andrew Carnegie prophesied, “my heart was in my work”.  

I feared that wandering too far from the creative end of the sausage factory, might someday lead to my own extinction.

I graduated from Rochester Institute of Technology in 1984. Computers were just beginning to appear on the design horizon. We had access to a couple of computers in school but they were little use in the graphic design studio.

For the first few years of my career, typography involved either run-down type (Geotype) or commercial typesetting. 

Many of you will remember, how galleys of type were received, run through a waxer (a machine that applied a thin layer of paraffin to the back of the photo paper of the typeset galleys). The galleys were then applied to hand ruled illustration board. Major corrections were made by reordering corrected galleys. For small changes (periods, commas, simple word swaps, etc.) a designer was forced to initiate “bird surgery” with a steady hand and a sharp X-acto blade.

I saw the first wave of old school designers wash out as Macintoshes entered the studio. These “designasaurs” were too set in their traditional ways, to see the computer tsunami approaching.

Around 1995, the Web rolled in and a second wave of headstrong creatives were pushed over the edge.

These drastic changes, in a significantly short time, provided me with the initiative to always keep one foot firmly planted in creative supervision–with the other foot firmly planted on the accelerator of my own creative machine.

I love quick creative bursts that produce unanticipated surprises. Like an all-in-one vitamin tablet, one a day is all that I need.

Here are a couple of tidbits from recent projects:

Recently, copywriter Jim Montgomery and I created a trade show print ad for client, Zmags. The technology company had developed a safari-themed booth. Mr. Montgomery’s copy and my graphic emphasized the fact that booth visitors, would safely enjoy a wildebeest-free environment. (This turned out to be true)

For the Andover Newton Theological School, I have been working on the “Think Outside the Pulpit” campaign–which introduces the notion that a career as a minister does not always mean standing in front of a Sunday morning congregation. Here is similar treatment that may someday make its way on to a T-shirt or iPad cover.

Although often misunderstood and in constant flux, graphic design is a wonderful profession and after 25+ years, I still enjoy the fun little details.—Doug.

EXPOSED: Stock Photography Models

Online posers, are secretly slinking within the underbelly of today’s graphic design profession.

This morning, I received an invitation to join the American Association of Retired People. 

I am sorry, but with the shape of American business today, despite me being a (young) half century old, retirement is not an option—at least for the future. Stop teasing me!

To make things worse, following a little digging and fact-checking, I found that the pleasant looking middle-aged male featured on the e-mail invitation was a– (long pause) stock photography model.

This hired mercenary has exceeded in making a career out of playing a two-dimensional mannequin. One minute, he is hawking AARP memberships, the next minute he is pushing anti-itch cream, sparkling chardonnay, or a new retirement community. 

To the casual observer, this meat puppet (we’ll call him Bob), may induce memories of a close friend or acquaintances. “Wait, I think that I know this person.”  How about, “He looks just like me, and if he has decided to buy used reconditioned bungie-jumping equipment, why can’t I?”

Consumers, wake up! Bob is a fraud! He is leading a highly questionable lifestyle–under a multitude of identities. One minute he is stock photo 1657611 “close-up of a happy age man,” and the next minute– stock photo 1559302 “close-up of the senior business man with his colleagues standing in a line behind him.”

For us, we must seek the truth in advertising and marketing. For Bob, it must be tough to go through life as something between a coat rack and a plant stand. – Doug.

Just Scratching the Surfaces

For those fans, who have closely followed EYMER DESIGN during our past 23 years–you may remember a couple of our product-related, sub-brands. Probably the best-known, was EYMERGEDDON, which featured a line if flaming skull designs, featured polo shirts, headbands, flip-flops shirts and web belts.

As a precursor to EYMERGEDDON, we built a division called “Surfaces.” 

During some recent deep spring cleaning in our design archives, we unearthed a series of t-shirt prototypes, designed and marketed under the Surfaces brand.

Please keep in mind, that we were in the pre-new-millennium years (1997-ish), and we were eager to get a jump on the upcoming millennial festivities. We also felt that it was our responsibility to remind all date-challenged earthlings, that the new millennium did not, in fact, start on January 1 of the year 2000 (as rumored)–but a year later–01.01.01. These were very confusing times.

Other favorites included a series of T’s that brought light to the fact that many different foods, including snake–also taste like chicken. 

One of my favorites, was a set of shirts that dealt with foods that our moms made us eat–lima beans, Jell-O salad, and worst of all, liver.

 

To round off my presentation, I've also included a couple of singles– “time flies” and “eat more carbon paper.”

 

Enjoy—Doug.

My TreadClimber Diary

Over four years ago I bought a BowFlex TC5000 Treadclimber. Having moved my office to Boston’s suburban South Shore, I couldn’t find a local gym that compared to the Boston Athletic Club, which I frequented for a large portion of the 14 years that I spent working out of South Boston (Eymer Design and PARTNERS+simons).

Please keep in mind that the name, “Boston Athletic Club” (at least at the time) carried more potential marketing clout than the actual facilities, which consisted of a large metal building or two, conveniently located in an industrial warehouse district. I had a client who once described the neighborhood as having a great deal of potential for hosting a real-life murder scene. 

The one key advantage to membership? You could stay anonymous. Enter, hand over your membership card, grab a towel, do your 60 minute workout with headphones on and locked on the elliptical cross-trainer’s video display, shower, dress and quietly leave.

In a town where the Stop & Shop grocery store has been nicknamed “Stop & Chat,” the last thing that I wanted to do was join a club where it was necessary to socialize for hours on end.

After minutes of careful research, I decided that an in-house exercise machine would provide the cardiovascular fitness as well as the shroud of secrecy, that I so desired.

The buying/mating dance with the Treadclimber was similar to my experience knee-jerk acquisition of the boxed set of Tony Robbins, Personal Achievement Cassettes. I awoke at 3:00 AM in front of an alluring, late-night, TV infomercial and two weeks later was the proud owner of a product that was destined “change my entire life.”

Since then, I have logged nearly 700 hours of walking time. My TC5000 has been almost completely rebuilt once (thankfully there is a multiyear warranty and I have the patience of a saint) and now sounds like my grandmother’s Singer sewing machine, rolling down a steep hill, inside an empty 50 gallon oil drum. For other family members, the racket lasts for a mere 60 minutes, 5 times a week. I have saved my precious hearing, through modernly marvelous, noise-canceling headphones.

Buyer beware: without some form of distraction, walking in place within the confines of a 10’ x 10’ room (not to be confused with the floor plan of the Unabomber’s cabin) might drive even the calmest of treadmill users to the highest levels of insane boredom. 

For nearly the first 3 years, I watched entire TV seasons on my iPhone’s miniature screen. The Wire, 30 Rock, True Blood, Rubicon (HBO show that sadly lasted only one season), The Office, Modern Family, Mad Men, Lie To Me, LOST, and In Treatment–I watched them all–preventing myself from dozing off and hurling myself off the spinning rubber walkway, only to be awoken by the back of my head smacking the floor.

Enter the iPad, eBooks and my own, recently diagnosed ADD

There has always been a voice that constantly reminding me to read a book. It is the same voice that reminds me to, “Go outside and play before I turn into a houseplant,” or states–“If you were on TV, I would turn you off.”

After years of starting dozens of books, and unsuccessfully dozing off after only a few pages, I have found the perfect solution of crossing literary titles off of my book bucket list. My eBook loaded iPad is now routinely placed on the center console of my hamster wheel. While walking at a rapid clip and with the type jacked up to HUGE, I have checked off 25 titles.

Here is my list:

1. Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation by Daniel J. Siegel
2. Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Lehrer
3. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
4. Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School by John Medina
5. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values by Robert M. Pirsig
6. Winning the Zero Moment of Truth - ZMOT by Jim Lecinski
7. Hamlet's Blackberry: a practical philosophy for building a good life in the digital age by William Powers
8. Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
9. The Art of Fielding: A Novel by Chad Harbach
10. In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin by Erik Larson 
11. The Complete Works of Mark Twain (Annotated) by Mark Twain
12. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, Christopher Buckley
13. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
14. Candy by Terry Southern, Mason Hoffenberg
15. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith
16. The Magic Christian by Terry Southern
17. Black Mass: The True Story of an Unholy Alliance Between the FBI and the Irish Mob by Dick Lehr, Gerard O'Neill
18. Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll And Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
19. Becoming a Life Change Artist: 7 Creative Skills to Reinvent Yourself at Any Stage of Life by Fred Mandell, Kathleen Jordan
20. Live Wire by Harlan Coben
21. Still Alice by Lisa Genova
22. Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War by Nathaniel Philbrick
23. The Art of Racing in the Rain: A Novel by Garth Stein
24. In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick
25. The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn by Nathaniel Philbrick