How to Fill a Warehouse with Story.

Being a strategist, designer, marketer, and illustrator means you never know what you’ll be working on next. Which I love. So when I got a call from the local dog care experts at Skipper, I knew the universe was throwing me a creative bone I could really chew on. (See what I did there?) Their plan was genius. Skipper was already giving pets a loving, rewarding day when their owners couldn’t be there to supply it in person. Skipper’s smartphone app lets dog owners share in their pet’s experience in real time with photos at walk-time, pics of drop-off and other fun activities. But now, they wanted to create an amazing “together experience”.

The bar would be the focal point of this enormous space. And once we nailed the concept, the bar almost designed itself. A pub-like structure (faux brick below, dark green wood up top), tall and open but visually complete thanks to the hanging windows. The bar served beer for dogs, as well, so of course the bar’s logo would be a water dish with a mug handle full of suds. Customers would order on an app and be notified when to FETCH their drinks. How fun is that?

Skipper bought a giant warehouse space in a neighborhood that’s about to be chock-o-block with upscale apartments because they wanted to make it the ultimate doggy bonding destination. A couple of dog bars already exist here, but they’re smelly, unkempt, and furnished with cheap tables and plastic chairs. Skipper wanted to create a mind-blowing, immersive EXPERIENCE. In addition to a bar, the building would also house a kennel, exercise yard, and a new HQ for Skipper’s operations (a super smart way to expand your office space needs, capabilities, and profit margin). Exciting on so many levels.

Even though the building was purchased and the architects were hired, the concept itself was still in exploratory mode. They knew generally where they wanted to go, but they wanted to see what was possible, if it was viable, and most importantly, if it was affordable. And it had to happen fast. So how do you make a giant, cavernous dog bar/kennel/tech biz a destination? We understood the existing audience and their needs. We knew plenty of Instagrammable destinations existed out there, but after one or two visits, they became tired thematically. What we needed was a good story. One that could freshly serve daily customers, frequent visitors, and out-of-town sightseers. One that was fun to work at every day. Oh, and one that would fit the brand. Easy.

Meet the competition. Yes, this is a dog bar in the same town. You can almost smell the urine.

Now this. This is how you fill a space. I visited a LOT of big spaces when I was doing the advance thinking for our workshop. Lowe’s Foods not only filled their giant space, they did it with style and story and without a lot of expense. That structure to the right is in the wine section. You can pour a beer and sit in this little container fort and pretend you’re not hanging out in a grocery store.

In our brainstorming workshop I taped up a handful of “starter themes” that we could riff around. I also posted up sheets to keep up on task – areas we’d need to consider, amenities and services offered, company mission, etc. It’s funny, but we sort of sputtered and stumbled around until we got to what was originally the Dog Hotel theme (remember, it was a kennel, too, so it made sense). Once we turned it into a town, it came to life in front of our eyes. It’s was really exciting!

The whole place would be filled with gags and little surprises. I especially like how the Firehouse is siren-free. Those clouds up there? I thought it’d be nice to do some sound baffling in a way that helped the story. :-)

Remember, it’s a town built by dogs for dogs. So the entrance is the town’s Tourist Center. You just walk your dog up that ramp to check you both in (you’re his/her guest, after all).. Once you’re checked in, you’re in the town square (complete with a stature of the founding pooch). From here you have a commanding view of the town. Hungry, visit the indoor-outdoor market where you’ll find snacks for dogs and humans.

I toured the space with the CEO and listened to her describe every detail, every wish, hope, and desire regarding the vision. Then I spent a couple of days coming up with some jumping-off points that we could talk around in a brainstorming workshop. And despite it being the dead of winter, we spent a couple few hours hammering out ideas in an unheated, on-site conference room. We filled the walls with good, bad, and ugly ideas until it was clear we had a winner.

The idea was simple. Create a town, founded by dogs, built by dogs, and governed by dogs (with assistance from their human partners). The space, as I said, was huge. If it was only filled with tables and chairs, it’d be overpowered by space, echoey and lame. Scale was our enemy. So I planned to fill the space with town buildings that would serve as little “forts'' to hang out in. A firehouse. An art museum. A town Hall of Fame. Since the town was built by dogs, everything from the signage to the tiniest bit of extra credit would be misspelled hilariously in enthusiastically sincere “dogese”. The entrance where you (human) and your Master (dog) checked in was the town’s Welcome Center (and, of course, Gift Shop). There was even a dog’s Farmers Market where all kinds of treats were sold (along with a human food food truck right outside the roll up garage door). My favorite part was the bar with the pub facade. You’d order drinks (including legit dog beverages) through the app and, when ready, you’d get a text. Not to pick up your order, but to FETCH it. And all of this detail came about in that two hour workshop including all the other ideas.

Knowing your audience and your service to them is important. But the story. Ugh, the story is the difference between being another dog bar and being something on a whole different level.

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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How To Bring Your Idea to Life.

I get a lot of junk mail. I know, everyone does. But with all the irons I have in all the fires, it’s like I get 10 times more than I should. Right now my phone says I have 12,802 unread emails. It ain’t lyin’. But I do at least scan them before I send them off to email oblivion. Which is a good thing because this fun project started with a random email I got from out of the blue, with the subject line, “Enquiry from Iceland.” Here’s the rest:

“Hello Dave and Kelly.           

My name is Gudmundur Helgason, I represent the Icelandic Public Bus Network which is called Strætó. 
I am a big fan of the Safe Baby Handling Tips book. It‘s hilarious.
We are thinking about clever ways to educate passengers on the rules and behavior around our buses. I had the idea it would be funny to make them in the same style as the Safe baby handling tips.
Here is one idea: You can bring closed coffee mugs on board the bus. But you can‘t bring your fancy glass kettle and teacup.
Is there a possibility for a collab project where you make funny artwork around bus etiquette?
Look forward hearing from you. 

Best regards from Iceland

Guðmundur Heiðar Helgason | Public Relations”

Now, if you don’t know Safe Baby Handling Tips, it’s an illustrated board book of baby do’s and don’ts that my wife and I authored for Running Press in 2005. If you’re in the having-a-baby zone of life, you’ve surely seen our tips because they’ve been scanned and shared freely online like crazy. Everyone says, “Dude, stop whining about it. It’s free advertising for your book!” It would be if the posts gave us credit, which they rarely do. In fact, there are even people on Facebook and Pinterest who claim the drawings as their own creation. Yeah. And then there are actually businesses who flat out rip off our work (more on this near the end). So when I read this email from Iceland, I was flabbergasted (in a good way). First off, it was such a great idea for the Tips format! Because how do you tell people not to be jerks on the bus without being a jerk yourself!? Genius. Second, Guðmundur’s email was so sweet and sincere. Third, it was so refreshing to have someone actually ask me to play with them. Fourth, Iceland needs me!? I couldn’t say no.

This Riding Tip was one of my client’s suggestions and one of my favorites because apparently people try to bring lawnmowers on the bus in Iceland. We did the Strætó Riding Tips in both Icelandic and English.

Guðmundur and his team wanted to use the Riding Tips on social media, so I recommended they do a good two weeks worth of Tips so the series had time to gain some momentum. I also recommended repurposing the drawings as bus shelters or window clings on the passenger windows. Why not maximize your usage, right? I threw together an estimate that included one hard-line demand on my part – a Strætó bus pass of my own. We agreed on a three-week window to get it all done, and we were off to the races.

Creating Tips (for any subject) is harder than you think. Which is why copycat tips always suck so bad. I get into the details here, but in short, your subject matter has to be really simple and there’s got to be a victim. Someone who’s either going to get hurt, get someone else hurt, or look like a complete imbecile. So I started by getting a list of bus rules from Guðmundur. Here’s some of what he sent over:

“• Passengers can have closed coffee cups on board.
• We advise people to be visible on the bus stops when the bus approaches. For example like stepping out of the bus stop and giving the driver a signal with the hand.
• Give up your seat for pregnant women or the elderly
• Don‘t disrupt the driver while he/her is driving.
• Passengers can bring bags, suitcases etc. on board if they are able to carry it by themselves. These things also should not damage the bus, endanger other passengers or disrupt their wellbeing. (Like bringing a lawn mover on board or smelly leaking garbage bags. Yes this happens :‘D)
• Pets should be kept in the back of the bus on the floor in front of you in a cage. (dogs should be on a leash.)
• Give bus driver time to see the fare or bus card.
• Bus drivers can only let people on or off the bus at official bus stops.
• Make room for other passengers if the bus is getting full during rush hours.”

Pretty standard stuff, right? I don’t know why that surprised me so much. As a Muni rider in San Francisco for 15 years, I’d seen my share of people breaking (sometimes obliterating) all these rules and more. So being super familiar with the Don’ts was really helpful from the get go. I went to work simplifying the complicated rules and started roughing out gags for each one. I also wanted to develop a way to brand each of the Riding Tips so that what happened to Safe Baby Handling Tips didn’t happen to Strætó. That meant adding a logo and their tagline to every Riding Tip, so if they went viral, you’d know where the work came from. I gave Guðmundur a few layout options for that, along with the 14 rough ideas I’d worked up. His team and I collaborated on tweaking the gags on Skype. It’s always dicey to work on funny stuff with a client, but Guðmundur and his crew were so good at it! Hahaha. It went so smoothly that I was able to go straight to tight drawings while incorporating our revisions. We worked in English and then when the final drawings were approved, Guðmundur sent me Icelandic translations to sock in. Easy Peasy. Before we knew it we were finished ahead of schedule. We were having so much fun we added three more Tips to the project. One of them I actually experienced in San Francisco – a woman clipping her toenails on the bus. Yeah. You really shouldn’t do that.

All in all there were 17 Riding Tips I created for Strætó. You can see all the illustrations I did here.

Guðmundur launched the series and it instantly went the way we’d hoped. People had so much fun commenting and playing along! The press it got was all super positive, but there was a small hiccup where some Icelanders thought Strætó was infringing on Safe Baby Handling Tips’ copyright. How’s that for irony!? An Icelandic journalist even emailed me about it. So Guðmundur and I enlisted her help to spread the word that Strætó did the right thing by collaborating with the original artist (me!), which extended the press cycle beautifully.

The series ran for 17 days and on the 18th day Guðmundur posted all the Riding Tips at once in English. Strætó’s Instagram traffic was typically 200-300 profile visits per week. During the Riding Tip run, it jumped to 3,500 per week. A Strætó post on Facebook usually reaches 10K – 20K people. The post with the Tips in English reached 165,000 people organically and is still climbing. And that’s completely bananas considering there are only 330,000 people living in Iceland.

Oh the press we got. If you can read Icelandic, you’ll see this is all good. And look at my client, Guðmundur, in the upper right! Handsome devil and just as clever. Below you can see the reference scrap of my wife Kelly.

I love this. One of the few press pieces in English. Fun Fact: That’s my brother and his not-nearly-as-old-as-that wife in the Helping the Elderly Tip.

Once the Tips were finished, I made it so they could be applicable in any other situation to maximize exposure with minimal extra cost.

Ugh, I wish I could end this story here, but I’ve got some advice for anyone in Guðmundur’s position. I’m a big fan of the saying, “If you don’t ask, you don’t get.” Guðmundur had a great idea to turn our Baby Tips into Riding Tips and rather than do a half-assed version of that idea and risk incurring the public scorn of copyright infringement, he wrote and asked if I wanted to play. People, you have nothing to lose by asking an artist to play! Yes, they might say no for whatever reason, but you’d be surprised at how many would say yes!

Guðmundur sent me the image on the left about three days after our Riding Tips series launched. A local energy drink co-opted our Tips format to do what I don’t know. I guess, say don’t drink something else? And on the right is my own country’s National Parks System doing a similarly lame rendition. Seriously, we could have done great things together for our National Parks.

Three weeks after the Riding Tips series ended I got a text from my brother saying our National Parks System was ripping off Safe Baby Handling Tips. It was one post and it was just awful. As I said before, sadly, it happens a lot. But this one made me so mad! And it was because of Guðmundur. Hahaha. A guy far away in Iceland who could have totally copied my work and I might never had known about it. And here my own country’s National Parks System goes and does exactly that. I did what I rarely do anymore (because it’s so upsetting) which is to post a comment that they were riffing on my work, could have just asked, yada, yada, yada. They took the post down eventually and I haven’t heard anything from them since. Which also made me mad. Because, like Guðmundur’s Riding Tips idea, it wasn’t a bad one. And I love our National Parks! I’d love to help them. But they’ll never know how successful their idea could have been.

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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How to Be One of the Cool Kids.

Design > Trade Show Booth

This booth! Hahaha. The Stuf brand was snooty as all get out. It was acting like a spoiled, high-end art studio and its big debut in its own show booth had to be amazing. I love planning out trade show booths. I mean, I hate it and love it. My process is ridiculous, so you’ll see why. I’m sort of a control freak. And, I’m not very spacial. Like, I can’t really tell, just off the top of my head, how to fill a 10’ x 10’ space with displays and furniture and chairs without it being all crowded and shitty. I need to cheat to find that out.

The Stuf booth had to be amazing, sure. But the brand was so clean, and white, and simple that it couldn’t be a circus (even though that was one of the Stuf families). Definitely, the figures needed to stand out. I started with some booth sketches and ended up with an idea of what I wanted to do. Then I moved onto Illustrator to create a floor plan to 1/4 scale. Then I’d do wall plans to scale. Then, yep, I print them out and build a small 1/4 model of the booth, complete with tiny hand-build shelving and furniture. I know what you’re thinking and, yes, I’m a total freak. But wait. There’s more. I populate it with little people to scale and then shoot it, so I can see what it’s like to be IN THE TINY BOOTH.

FINAL: For Stuf’s premier booth at NYIGF, I wanted to build a world a booth that would blow people away while not overshadowing the product. Entering the cloud-world of Stuf, you’re treated to a museum-like experience.

BEFORE: Can you believe this is what our space was when we got there? The design section had wood walls instead of the pipe-and-drape you’d get in less fancy parts of the show. I knew we’d have stable walls before I started designing for it and it’s the only way we could have done what we did.

COMPS: An early sketch that I took to Adobe Illustrator to work out. It didn’t work out. It’d have been cool, but I didn’t think anyone would want to come into the booth through such a narrow entrance. Especially the top part. But the idea of a semi-enclosed space was interesting. So I scaled everything back to end up with the clouds. Because they were all white and the booth was white, I thought they’d be less intimidating. They’d become sort of visible but invisible. To test it out, I’d have to make a scale model because I’m weird like that. Also, I love that tie.

COMPS: Proof positive. My model really helped me understand the space, figure out how I’d attach the clouds to the walls, and managed my expectations. Then I could get down to speccing out the details to give to the guys I hired to make the clouds for me. They had to be light (and on the cheap) so I ended having them cut out of thin sheets of PVC. Then they’d just bend ‘em where I needed a tab to screw them in.

FINAL: A look at our hardcover application to get into the snooty design section of the show. That’s a picture of my model in the book. I hadn’t made the booth yet, but wanted to convince them it was real, it was cool, and it was ready to bring to NY. Kelly’s standing outside the Stuf booth just as we started setting it up. And finally here’s my model shot again along side the real deal. Expectations managed! Hahahaha. It kind of creeps me out how similar they are, but that’s says a lot about thinking shit through. Or about how much I hate surprises.

The best part of this was the clouds. The front of the booth would be framed in clouds, as if they were parting to let you in. Directly behind the clouds, a bright white booth where the only color was the color of the Stuf dolls. It made a HUGE impact. The trick with bringing Stuf to trade shows wasn’t the booth, though. It was getting in at all. Because Stuf belonged in the Design category, and that category is as snooty as the fake art brand we’d created. The design sections of trade shows are juried. You have to submit pictures of your booth and your brand and your products, and then they decide if you’re one of the cool kids or not. And of course Stuf didn’t actually have the booth ready to go yet (I wasn’t going to pay to manufacture it, if I wasn’t going to get in). So that’s where making a scale model maybe wasn’t such a crazy thing to do after all?

We made a hardcover book of the Stuf brand, and we sent that as our application! Yeah, INSTEAD of the actual application. Who does that?! Of course we got in because of it. I’ve written about what a disaster our first shipment of Stuf dolls turned out to be, and this booth was sort of a similar tale. As simple as we designed it, it took FOREVER to set up. We thought it might take a few hours – screw in a bunch of shelves, screw in the clouds, rub down some type, how hard can it be? It took us 7 hours to set up. And when you believe it’ll take 3, but instead it takes 7, it’s mental torment. But the final product was worth it. 

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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How to Break Into Modern Art Museums.

Strategy > Product Development

I’d designed and manufactured all kinds of products – baby clothing, children’s hooded towels, toys, stacking blocks, board books, even pacifier cases. OMG it was all so HARD. I had always wanted to make a line of plush (normal people call them stuffed animals), but was intimidated by the potential for it to go wrong. Hahaha. I’m such a chicken, but being gun-shy DID bring me success in our Mysterio line. So, I put that kind of thinking against the plush problem.

First of all, and if you know me you already know this, it couldn’t be like any plush. I didn’t want to make furry lions, or sweet teddy bears out of recycled sweaters. It had to be different. I was super intrigued by blind box art toys. Especially the artists who were sculpting one simple form, and then re-skinning that form in different ways. It seemed so simple and yet so endless what you could do within those confines. So I started noodling forms and experimenting with what could be done with them.

Where I ended up was certainly really different. Canvas forms filled with beans at the base so they stood on their own. Easy surface to print on, simple shape to sew. Manufacturing would be easy since I’d only be held to a printing minimum rather than a per piece construction minimum. I could make a lot of different dolls without a lot of expense. But it wasn’t “fluffy expected” and it wasn’t particularly “baby”. I didn’t think it mattered. I was going for something beyond expectation.

FINAL: This is Robot Stuf. Because we were funding this line ourselves we had to do it as economically as possible. Can you guess one of our methods? Right. Limited colors on each doll (notice the ON switch on the back isn’t green). But it made it a challenge. So what do you do when you’re limited on colors? Double down and make it work to distinguish each dolls individuality and character.

FINAL: All along It was always this simple. The form on the left was Big Stuf, 12” tall. On the right, Small Stuf, 6” tall. These were the blank factory samples we approved.

FINAL: While some Stuf families had the same patterns on the back of each doll (Robot Stuf all had ON and OFF buttons, Circus Stuf all had a shared graphic pattern), Pirate Stuf all had a bit about each pirate’s personality on the back. My favorite, I think, was the orange Shaggy Dan who was “only a little afraid of the water”.

FINAL: Circus Stuf was probably my favorite family and it was an honor to have them for sale at the Ringling (as in Ringling Brothers) Museum of Art Florida. Pictured with the Circus Stuf family is the Big Top-themed wood and canvas backdrop I later added to the line.

FINAL: Bird Stuf and Developmental Stuf.

I always tell my clients that they need to design their audience before they design their product. I knew I wanted this line to appeal to art-types, and that because of it’s plush category nature, they’d likely be parents. So why not make collectible art plush for children? And that’s when I started working on themes. I went EVERYWHERE and it was SO fun. I eventually landed on five different sets – Circus, Bird, Robot, Pirate, and Developmental. Developmental Stuf was interesting because developmental research shows that babies respond positively to high contrast items. It stimulates their brains like crazy (in a good way).

Side note: No matter how simple you try to make things, it always gets complicated. We had hired a freelance production manager who’d worked for the likes of the Gap and we found a factory who’d manufactured for Disney, yet 75% of our container shipment arrived practically destroyed. Badly sewn, misprinted, stained and unsellable. The 25% we could use was exactly to specification, thank goodness. Entrepreneurs, know this: no matter how much you try to prevent this situation, it’s ALWAYS a possibility. Which ALWAYS sucks. 

I’d always planned to market Stuf in a special way. Like, exclusive special. So I developed a line presentation that would set it up to be museum quality from the beginning. Even the name, Stuf, gave a simplistic European flavor without the fancy umlauts. Each line of Stuf would be a limited series, and a percentage of proceeds would be donated to a specific charity related to each theme. Bird Stuf, for example, would donate to the American Bird Conservatory. Developmental Stuf would contribute to Plan. The idea was for stores to display each line of Stuf alongside an engraved plaque we had made with the charity information. When a customer brought a Stuf doll to the register, the shopkeep would retrieve a fresh product from the back for purchase. It was special art you could buy. And this is an important part of the strategy – perceived value. We set this up to look like each piece (with its charitable contributions and lack of back stock) would retail for $40 each. No. Each of the small dolls retailed for just $12.95. The big ones for just $24.95.

FINAL: Our online retail packaging was clean, simple and graphic, like the brand.

FINAL: Developmental Stuf in NY MOMA.

Finally I get to the REAL strategy part. We didn’t cop to being the creators of Stuf. We were just the DISTRIBUTERS. We never told our stores or any interested parties where Stuf came from. And this is important to building mystique. We build a whole separate website for Stuf and only offered a single Stuf email as contact info. No order forms. No list of stores that we sold to. No wholesale reps to contact to buy it. Nothing. This all lived in the background before we launched at the big NY International Gift Fair.

When Wrybaby did bring it to market, we played dumb. We found this line and we’re the distributors. It was so different from anything else in the Wrybaby booth, it was totally plausible. And we gave it wide berth to attract stores we’d never been in before. Those store were museum stores. Modern art museums. And we got their attention. Before too long Stuf was available in:

MOMA NY
MOMA SF
Contemporary Arts Center - Cinncinati
Walker Art Center - Minneapolis
The Art Gallery of new South Wales
Arkansas Arts Center
Contemporary Arts Museum Houston
Delaware Art Museum
Portland Art Museum
Tacoma Art Museum
Dallas Museum of Art
Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland
Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago
Ringling Museum of Art Florida
The Getty Museum
The Ackland Museum NC
The Autry Museum
The Bremam Museum
Bay Area Discovery Museum

FINAL: Once the concept proved itself, Stuf got to have it’s own booth at NYIGF. So clean! I wish I had a better camera to document it. :-P

But here’s the best part. Museums liked Stuf, but we pulled the whole third-party distributorship act through to the end. Emails to the Stuf website went unanswered, or a Stuf Staffer replied vaguely. There was no phone number to call. It was like those Stuf people weren’t really interested in selling their plush dolls at all. Stuf’s website was hilariously smug. It was set up like a modern art gallery site. It only listed the products, the museums they were in (which expanded by the week), the charities it funded, and the trade shows it would be presented at. I’ll tell you, I sat on the one museums PO for months until they were calling me every day to fill our their new vendor form and ship them. Why? Sometimes the more you make people want something and the more they have to work for it, the more valuable it becomes to them. It’s the law of exclusivity. Availability works the same way.

Stuf was successful enough to warrant an INCREDIBLE trade show booth dedicated to it. Very artsy. We added cool canvas backdrops to the product line so kids could put on plays using characters from each Stuf theme. Stuf went through another reorder with another factory (much better) and we retired the line to focus on other projects. But I’ve still have the bragging rights to having my art featured in most of America’s major art museums (even if it was in the gift shops).

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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How Packaging Can Set the Stage.

Design > Packaging

Mysterio’s product is super unique. And as I mentioned, things people have never seen before are hard to package. Mysterio tells you your baby’s future on a little t-shirt. There are 12 possible futures (all party safe), and each is sealed up in this bag so that it’s a surprise when you open it. Back in 2006, I didn’t think I had to explain that last part – what with blind box toys getting more and more popular each year. But trust me, the average consumer STILL needs all of this explained to them. Sigh. I’ll share some business and behavioral lessons we learned as I go.

FINAL: Mysterio’s packaging had to do SO MUCH. Tell you what it was, what it did, what the possibilities were, what the guarantee was, where it was made, who made it, and even how to open the goddam thing,

Anyhoo, that’s a lot of work for a little muslin bag! Which is why the whole front of the bag is the product description. The back? All support, no filler. Build up the experience while explaining the experience. We did this for another reason, too – the end user experience. If you haven’t been to a baby shower, here’s how it works. There’s a lot of games and chit chat and cake and such, and then everyone gathers around to watch the mom-to-be open her gifts. When she gets to Mysterio, she’ll likely read the bag out loud before opening it. Therefore, she’ll be explaining to everyone exactly what to expect while building anticipation. Show time!

And this is why, at first, we didn’t list the futures on the bag. We printed the on the wood display so that when Mysterio’s t-shirt was given, nothing would lead the giftee (or her audience) to think their surprise future would be more funny than aspirational. Good idea for the consumer, bad idea for our bottom line. Why? Because on our next reorder from the factory, we decided to freshen up the futures. But we still had a ton of displays. So that meant printing new lids for everyone who already had displays. Woof.

FINAL:And this is Mysterio’s packaging from way back in 2006. Lots of lessons learned along the way! This was when we tried to make the bag easy to open by just pulling the top string (big mistake) and relied on a lot of copy to get the story across (big mistake; no one wants to read).

The first bag was also easier to open. On the first two rounds of production, all you had to do was pull a red string to open it (like a bag of charcoal or dog food). For dramatic effect, we wanted to make the opening act (see what I did there?) was as seamless as possible. We didn’t want to interrupt the mood we’d built up by having someone run off to find scissors, leaving everyone in awkward silence until they returned. This, however was a big mistake – for retail stores. Why? Because their customers were opening all the bags, searching for the future they liked the best. What the fuck is wrong with people? One store watched Puff Daddy’s personal chef do that, but at least he paid for all the ones he opened before he left. Anyway, we got tired of paying to re-sew all the bags closed. So now, you gotta have scissors at the ready to open it.

Speaking of construction, the pinked edges of the bag were designed to give it a roughness. Sort of an economical, controlled fraying. Oh, and while we always offered the wood display, some stores decided the display wasn’t worth the nominal fee and made their own thing (which usually translates to standing them up in a basket where no one will see them). Then they complain the shirts aren’t selling (which never happens), so they finally buy a display, and then they sell through their stock. But still, we wanted to give options. That’s why we eventually added the brass grommet up top. So if stores really didn’t want or have room for the display, they could at least hang it on a peg on a wall slat, and the front of the bag can do it’s job. Options are always good. It costs more to do, but didn’t detract from the product and it enhanced its sellability.

COMPS: Two bad ideas. Megastore Buy Buy Baby wanted to try Mysterio out, but didn’t want the wood display. That’s when we had to start thinking about alternate solutions. This on the left was the quick fix to make it work with inventory we already had. Oh, and we felt like we had to dumb the paper hanger down A LOT for a mass market (which would still be true today). Workable, but I like the grommet we did later better. And on the right is a quick fix for our displays when we changed up the futures. Not a bad solution, but not an ideal long-term one.

Let’s talk about extra credit. I say, it’s for chumps. Here’s a good example. When we switched to scissor-open-bags, I wanted to add something to add some stability. It always sort of bothered me that the bag was so floppy and light. I know, it only held a tiny folded t-shirt, but still. I also didn’t want people cutting through the t-shirt while opening the bag (see, I was learning!), so I added a thick cardboard card with an outrageous guarantee. If Mysterio’s future wasn’t correct by the time the child was 70, you could return it for a full refund. Funny, but not to our lawyer. At least until I showed him the legalese attached to the guarantee:

*Claims must be submitted with original receipt and the allegedly inaccurate garment upon which Mysterio’s prediction must be legible. Substituted garments will void this offer (besides, Mysterio will know you were trying to trick him). Claims shall also include a facsimile of child’s birth certificate, complete grade school transcripts and college transcripts (if applicable). Please also include an essay by the child, in his or her own words explaining the circumstance of his or her failure to achieve the destiny predicted by Mysterio detailing any conflict of personal hopes and/or dreams. As all claims will occur in the distant future, before submitting your claim, please consult a psychic or other such mystic for information regarding Mysterio’s whereabouts. Reimbursement will consist solely of the garment’s original purchase price minus sales tax and minus any delivery fees Mysterio shall incur. If said fees exceed the refund amount, you will receive an invoice from Mysterio of the balance owed to him by you. Invoice will be payable immediately. Failure to remit payment will result in dream-state visitations to the claimant by Mysterio until the balance is settled. By reading this agreement you promise to see the futility in filing a claim and to realize that it’s perhaps easier to go ahead and just fulfill Mysterio’s prediction by doing what he said you’d do.

Fun little extra spice to add, right? Nah. It added a new vendor to production, drove up the manufacturing cost, and in the end I don’t think anyone really cares. Maybe it was just too much. Like a smart friend of mine is fond of saying, “It’s a joke on a joke”. Unnecessary. We’re heading into our 10th reorder of Mysterio shirts, so if you want one with a guarantee, you’d best order one now before they’re gone. Hahaha.

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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How to Expand a Magical World.

Design > Product

I’ve said before that your packaging is as much the product as the product is. This is another example of how true that is. If you don’t know, Mysterio makes a baby t-shirt that can predict your child’s future. Kelly and I had just published a children’s picture book about Mysterio and we were looking to expand his product line. Mysterio was always more of a gift for parents than a gift for baby. Sure, the baby got a shirt. But the parents, the baby shower guests and the gift-giver, all got a fun, memorable experience. So why not develop more experiences for them

FINAL: BEHOLD! Mysterio’s Deluxe Keepsake Chest! An expansion of the Mysterio infant t-shirts that predict your baby’s future. It was so fun to play in this sandbox from a design and illustration standpoint. Almost too fun. In the end I made way too much stuff for it. Made it a little hard to explain all the contents!

That’s where Mysterio’s Keepsake Chest came from. It was a deluxe collection of Mysterio’s baby shirt, his book, two fun games, a wooden top, and a paper craft. Over the years, customer feedback told us that people really did keep Mysterio’s shirts once their baby’s grew out of them. How fun to see if the future would eventually come true! So one of the games we developed predicted more specific events – Milestones. At the bottom of the box lies the game board and a heavy card filled with milestones. Spin the top and name a milestone. When it stops, it will point to the age at which the child will reach that milestone. Write it down on the card. Easy! The fun part is discovering that your child’s first haircut will happen at 58 years of age. Yes, all silly, good fun at a baby shower. Flip the game board over, and you’ll find that Mysterio will answer any YES or NO questions you have. Again, ask the question, spin the top, get Mysterio’s answer.

FINAL: SEE?! TOO MUCH STUFF! The tag on the outside had a list of contents (as brief as I could make it), but it still read like a novella. The game board that’s flipping up? That’s two games on one board. Of course it comes with a one of Mysterio’s signature baby t-shirts and his new picture book.

FINAL: A close up look at the Ask-O-Meter! Think of it as a flat, paper, much sassier Magic 8-Ball. I’ve got one of these in our living room and we use it all the time to make YES or NO decisions for us. I like how a lot of the answers end up being sort of confusingly ambiguous/

FINAL: The flip side to the Ask-O-Meter is a fun way to record when your baby will meet their major development milestones. What’s so funny is how horribly wrong Mysterio’s predictions get. First Tooth could be at 51 years, for example. Hilarious.

FINAL: There’s even a little papercraft Mysterio that you can pop on a shelf to keep a mystical eye out for baby. I like the extra credit (which I always say is for chumps) of printing a back to the paper Mysterio complete with all the instructions reversed as well. And here’s a shot of me tying up a box to ship out. I’d do 100 of these at a go and it KILLED my fingers. The things you do for art.

I think my favorite part of the whole thing was the clever packaging. We stuffed the box with wood excelsior so it looked all wild and exotic. We even slid the lid closed to leave some of the curly fill sticking out because it looked so cool. And just like we did on his baby shirt packaging, we let the lid be pretty simple and straightforward. We used a paper tag to really detail all the info. But even the tag was cool because, as the gift-giver, you could clip off the contents part and be left with a nice gift tag to fill out. Then, the giftee could discover the contents on their own. Also, it looked WAY not-commercial that way, too. Oh, and to keep people from getting into the box in stores (I already learned they would try), I wrapped each one with heavy rope and fastened it tight with heavy black wire. It killed my hands (yes, I wrapped them all myself), but it was totally worth it.

When baby was too big for Mysterio things, the whole kit and kaboodle could be stored away in Mysterio’s handsome wooden chest. Someday, far in the future, the child would find it, and have a good chuckle.

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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How to Not Destroy a Baby.

Strategy > Safe Baby Handling Tips

Are you a parent? Let me tell you, it’s terrifying. Scary at the least. If you are one, you know what I’m talking about. You’re so nervous and excited and, well, clueless. Because if it’s your first, you have no real idea what you’ve gotten yourselves into. And that’s a fact that becomes more and more clear as you careen toward your due date. When Kelly and I were expecting, I was just scared. She was terrified.

FINAL: The cover of the expanded version of Safe Baby Handling Tips. On the cover is a miniature, simplified version of another product I designed for Wrybaby – The Wheel of Responsibility.

When I was 14, my parents decided they missed being parents (of really small, helpless people). So, they had my brother Josh. Then my sister, Lindsey, three years later. So being in middle school through high school with a couple of babies in the house would prove really helpful to me as a soon-to-be-dad. I knew how to feed and burp a baby, change diapers, and all that jazz. Meh, just like ridin’ a bike. I was in no way emotionally prepared (and who is the first time) for the shock of full time responsibility, but at least I had some exposure in the field. Kelly had none.

We did all the things you do as expecting parents. We read scary articles online, we bought books that were thick and boring, or thick and scary. We were the first of our hipster advertising friends to have a baby, so they were, hilariously, no help at all. We went to baby care classes, and to the requisite Lamaz classes. And finally, our hands about all wrung out, Kelly went into labor and everything changed. 

 Sorry, changed for the better, I mean. Kelly and I soon discovered a few important truths.

1. Across the span of human history, all new new parents feel the same

2. Caring for a baby is difficult, but it’s manageable and only gets easier with time

3. You’ve got to be a fucking moron to really mess this up

REVIEWS: Our Amazon reviews are hilariously amazeballs.

TRUE: The only foreign translation of Safe Baby Handling Tips – German. Take a look at that title on the cover! Hahahaha. Do I have to tell you I had nothing to do with the layout? So bad!

That last point, especially. That’s where Safe Baby Handling Tips came from. Look, as long as your intentions are good, and you’re a somewhat stable person, you really aren’t going to mess this up. At least not in the beginning. Oh, you’ve got all the time in the world to unintentionally destroy your child emotionally. But in the first year? Nah. You good.

We’d conceived (see what I did there) the concept of these “handling tips” about a week after bringing our new son home. Each illustrated tip was printed on a newborn item: a onesie (Playing with Baby); a hooded towel (Drying Baby); a diaper cover (Checking Baby’s Diaper); you get the idea. It’s very simple. Each scenario shows you a common parenting activity and what kind an absolute idiot you’d have to be to mess it up. Sort of gives you some perspective, no?

Anyhoo, we were in Wrybaby’s booth at the New York International Trade Fair when a couple of reps from Running Press strolled in. They asked me if I had any more of these tips to fill a book. “Of course!”, I said. I didn’t. But I sure did a week later when we sent them the packet of illustrations that would eventually become Safe Baby Handling Tips.

To date, Safe Baby Handling Tips has sold over 120,000 copies. It is also well reviewed on Amazon. The book has been translated into German because if anyone knows anything about comedy, it’s the Germans. And the illustrations have become an stubbornly enduring meme on the internets much to our pleasure and dismay.

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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How to See If People Like What You Make, Then Be OK If They Don’t.

Design > Product

This is really weird. But it was supposed to be, so I achieved what I set out to do. I’d been working on a lot of really fun but intense projects that all sort of ended at the same time, so I felt I needed to stretch my legs a little and do something for me. So I decided that thing was to make some fun stickers. The thought was that I’d make sheets of bizarrely themed stickers and then turn the best ones into postcard sets, and then canvas bags, and then...you get the idea. I’d take everything I knew about what gift stores are buying today and illustrate my own odd little brand to offer folks.

FINAL: The idea behind Mr. Dave’s Best Stickers in three photos. A sheet of weirdly themed stickers. Which you could peel off and put to equally weird uses to delight your family, friends and co-workers. A genius product that was way before it’s time.

FINAL: I was especially pleased with how the back turned out. Yes. I wrote the copy all by myself.

FINAL: Oh, there were all kinds of topics. I could go on forever. But fate had different plans!

Kids! Hahaha...I love kids. My friends’ kids all call me Mr. Dave (I live in the South, you know) and I think it’s hilarious so that’s what I called my line. I went for a retro look to offset the not-retro-at-all themes. Sort of a brand subterfuge to make people think they’re about to see something really sweet and wholesome and then it turns out to be stickers of cats pooping.

I put a challenge to myself to do, like, 30 full sheets to prove that the idea had legs. I wanted to make sure that I didn’t get bored halfway or feel like I was running out of ideas. That ended up being over 150 individual drawings! So I took 5 sheets that best represented the line and them printed in China on the cheap. I thought I’d test out the concept on Etsy while running them past a bunch of gift boutiques. I quickly found that, um, people don’t come to Etsy to buy stickers, much less stickers of run-over animals (see Roadkill). Great for the unique, bad for strange. Gift stores didn’t know what to think. Hahaha. It was a mess. I don’t know what I was expecting, but no one wanted any part of that shit. They didn’t get the topics or anything. And these are people who’ve known my sense of humor for years. One store asked why it was so old fashioned. What? So I got my stickers into a big box store. Well, one big box store. Cost Plus World Market. The one closest to my house.

FINAL: Actually, there was a sort of categorical plan. Knowing what I know about the gift and greeting card industry, I was able to focus on weird themes in distinct categories: Animals, Fashion & Culture, Food & Drink, Home & Garden, and Health & Fitness.

FINAL: Oh, I also made postcards and posters. You can see more high-brow designs in the illustration category.

Here’s what I did. I went in one day, found some items that were $6.95 (Mr. Dave’s MSRP) and took pictures of their price tags. I went home and printed out the tags and stuck them on the backs of 5 Unicorn Poop sticker sheets and 5 Dead and Dying Succulents sticker sheets. It was just days before Christmas, and World Market had a special little section for unicorn stuff (plush, notebooks, junk like that) and a special little collection nearby of potted succulents. Perfect places to surreptitiously drop my sticker packs and make a hasty retreat.

I returned the next day and found they were not only still hanging there, undiscovered by World Market Employees, but one of the Dead and Dying Succulent sticker sheets had sold! So I kept going back whenever I was in the neighborhood or needing more Hoi Son Sauce, and the selling proved to be slow going. After a few months they took down those special little displays. I thought that was the end of my experiment, but I found my stickers had simply been moved to another part of the store. I kept checking back periodically and was sorry to see that the savvy World Market shopper was really not interested in Unicorn Poop stickers. I hadn’t sold any. But there were only 2 left of the succulents. Yay? What’s weird is the stickers never made it to the Clearance shelves. I’d have been so sad if they had, but they just continued to be repositioned around the store. At month seven, I couldn’t find them anywhere and thought, “Oh, well, it was fun while it lasted.” But the next day my wife sent me a picture showing they’d been moved up to the checkout impulse racks – just three Unicorn Poop sheets hanging below the gluten-free gum and salted licorice from Norway.

FINAL: The great World Market experiment. On the left is where I left my Dead and Dying Succulents stickers and on the right the sad aftermath months and months later. Just a couple Unicorn Poop stickers left!

I’m so sorry, I don’t think I have a point here. Hahaha. I guess it’s that when something doesn’t work, try and learn what you can from it and move on. Or make a quasi-illegal game out of it to keep yourself amused while you go on to the next adventure.

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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How to Describe Something That’s Never Existed.

Strategy > Product Description

VersaMe made an early-education wearable that would count the number of words a child heard throughout the day. Not WHAT the words were, mind you. It just counted how many of them there were. Parents would get detailed data in almost real-time about how many words were said, and when. So, what would you call that? A word counter might be your first thought.

Now think of a device that counts your steps. A-ha! Easy, right? A Fitbit or, step counter or whatever. Tons of them that exist. But you already know, after decades of education from various sources, that exercising is good for you. Even walking adds benefits to your health. So, steps x healthy = the more steps the better. Done. Good job.

WHAT DOES IT DO? So small, so cute, so frustrating to describe! AAAAAAHHHHUUUGHH!

But the vast majority of people don’t know why more words are good for your baby. When I started working on this, the best way to get people to understand the product (once you established it was a wearable for infants that improved Junior’s educational potential by counting the words he heard) was to say, “It’s like a Fitbit for words.” You could literally see cartoon lightbulbs go on over people heads.

But that’s no way to brand a product. You can’t rely on another brand name to describe your product no matter how different an industry it’s rooted in. This is a really stupid, hard problem. It starts to sound like a really mean logic puzzle when you get into it a bit.

Wearable Word Counter - Doesn’t explain the fullness of the system (hardware, mobile software, benefits)

Advanced Early-Education Wearable - Doesn’t say what it does.

Early-Education System - Well, it’s more than a word counter, but again, not very descriptive.

Wearable Word Tracker - Sounds like it keeps track of which words a baby hears

Also, the Starling didn’t record the words a baby heard. It literally just counted them. So words like tracker were verboten.

FINAL: Where we ended up on the redesigned packaging – complete early education system. Which was super accurate, but still a clunky mouthful.

This kind of technology never existed for everyday consumers, so they had no point of reference to lean on to understand it. In the end, the closest I got was to describe it as an early-education monitor. And I thought that was SUPER close. After all, you use a sleep monitor to be sure your baby is sleeping enough. Why wouldn’t you use an education monitor to tell if your baby’s learning enough? I’ll always wish we had more time to reconfigure in this direction to see how this would have done. Never underestimate how hard it is to sell something no one has ever seen before. And know that the only solution involves repeated education, and time. And lots of both.

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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How and When to Use Restraint.

Design > Logos

Sometimes the solution to a problem is right in front of your face. Downtown Mooresville is the birthplace of Mooresville, NC. You can honestly say the train delivered it. Incorporated in 1891, the town began with a railroad depot where farmers would load their cotton. Many of the buildings that sprang up soon after are still here in a little 2 x 3 block area that straddles the rails which still see a freight engine once a day. Only now, it loads grain from the mill on North Main Street. One block down from the depot (not the original, due to a fire, but still charming) are the ruins of Mill #1 where cotton was spun. Further south is the massive mill complex that would replace it - Burlington Mill. I’m telling you all this because that’s the kind of charm Downtown has. It’s not fancy, but it’s not dull. It’s historic as gangbusters, but not famous. It seeps potential. Heck, it’s why I moved from SF to live a couple of blocks from it.

FINAL: Here’s where Mooresville started – at the train depot. It was a simple farming town and Downtown Mooresville still reflects it’s historic railroad heritage.

While Downtown had been here for over a century, about 85% of new residents (those living among all the Super Targets, Red Robin’s, and Chipotle’s near the lake) had no idea Downtown existed. Seriously. They just never thought about turning right when they got off the freeway on their way home from Charlotte. On the Downtown side, people knew it was there, but there was an identity vacuum. Downtown was at about 40% business occupancy where we started. The merchants who were slugging it out were desperate to increase traffic as they saw a boom beginning to happen down in Charlotte. NoDa (for North Davidson), Dillworth, Plaza Midwood – these were old neighborhoods that were becoming hipster hot spots. A smattering of coffee shops and breakfast dives moved into the 50’s and 60’s era gas stations and whatnot in these mainly residential neighborhoods – and they were getting buzz. It was where the cool people hung out. Mooresville merchants thought...“Downtown needs cool people. So we need a cool name.”

“The Dirty Mo’” and “DoMo” (see what they did with that one?) were big favorites among them. In fact, the sushi place made shirts and stickers and was running full steam with their “DoMo” idea, whether anyone agreed with it or not. Look, having a cool name is great. I’m a big fan. But when people don’t even know you exist, it can work against you. Take DoMo. What the fuck is that? Run with that and you’ll 100% have to explain it in the tag line. “DoMo. In Downtown Mooresville!” Two wasted opportunities to identify yourself. No, if you have to start from chapter 0, then do the work and call yourself what you are – Downtown Mooresville. Oh, and no one had ever used a capital D when writing the word Downtown in copy before. We told them to start. It’s a destination, so treat it like one. Always. Anyway, even though we’d name Downtown what it already was, we’d do something important with the logo – we’d lead with the tagline and use the name as support.

FINAL: See? Same hardware store as 100 years ago, but now we have people who run for fun. I think they call it “exercise”. The logo still suits the atmosphere, no?

The logo itself was inspired by old railroad signage from historic photos of Downtown. If you’re thinking, “oooh, big idea using railroad graphics for a railroad town”, think again. The big money Lake Norman side has a freeway, a lake and Five Guys Burgers and Fries. We’ve got the railroad and the 104 year old hardware store. Work with what works best for your message. This is how you build an historic rail district. And if you’re still miffed about the railroad imagery, get ready to be more miffed. The font I used was called Railroad Gothic. You know, sometimes the best idea is the obvious one.

FINAL: I used these images when I presented the final logo to the Downtown Commission. Even though it’s simple and historic, the logo had to be able to live in a variety of modern situations that’ll likely come Downtown. Clothing stores, restaurants, nightlife, events of all kinds…the logo had to be able to support all that and keep it’s sense of place.

I used black and white for the logo, and as an accent, the red-orange that was predominant in the bricks of our historic buildings (it stood out like gangbusters in advertising). Then I locked it all up nice and neat with the tag line, and tweaked the perspective on the whole thing to give it a little motion. Sort of like you’re passing through town and seeing it from the train window, painted on a brick building (yep, Downtown’s got a lot of old advertising murals, too).

Oh, I almost forgot. The tag line itself is the best part. It was one of the biggest lies I’ve ever told (professionally). There was certainly nothing going on Downtown. But there’s would be. The Downtown Commission was gearing up for their first big flight of non-stop events and we were cranking out supporting materials like crazy to get people to go to them. We had no idea that it would take less than a year for our big lie to become the absolute truth.

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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How to Design Way More Than a Loyalty Program.

Design > Logos

This little program we developed solved a whole bunch of problems for Downtown Mooresville. If you want to know the strategic nitty gritty, you can get it here, but I wanted to run though some detail on the actual pieces real quick. Downtown never had any money to spend. So aside from being strategically versatile, the production of the materials had to be super cheap.

FINAL: Logos designed for the Downtownie program. One for each of the three stages of participation.

I knew all this going into Downtown’s logo design and that’s part of why I kept it black and white to begin with. But that came in super handy for the Passport part of this program. I developed a special little passport stamp with a mark featuring the Downtown logo socked into it, and we were off. The Passport had to be cheap to print and durable enough to be carried around in someone’s purse or pocket for a while (while the user collected stickers) and to eventually survive being mailed. So, heavy chip board and one-color printing fit perfectly with the brand and gave it a throw-weight that made it hipster high-design. The stickers?  Avery label sheets (no special die cutting) and an identifying icon for each type of business you’d visit Downtown {event, shopping, food, drink, services}. Oh, and every Passport came with a half-page flyer (economical!) which explained the program to each target audience – Live It (people who lived within walking distance), and Love It (people who loved driving across town to visit).

FINAL: Our award-winning Downtownie program starts here, with a special passport that you’d fill with stickers from businesses and events in Downtown Mooresville.

FINAL: Collect all the stickers and mail your Passport in. You’ll get this fun little package from Mooresville’s Downtown Commission making you an official, card-carrying Downtownie! Complete with a nifty decal for your car.

FINAL: Teamwork makes the dream work. Literally. The back of the Downtownie card told members to look for participating shops via window signs Downtown. Getting a HUGE chunk of Downtown businesses to participate was instrumental to the Downtownie program’s success. The icing on the cake was winning an innovation award from the North Carolina Main Street Center.

The card itself was a very simple thing and I used the Downtown photo collage I built for the website to try and make it look exciting. The back was a hoot to write though. I developed separate logos for both the Downtownie car decal (which you’d receive when you got your card in the mail), and for the merchant window stickers. I wanted the systems logos to look like the kind of logos you’d see attached to a City or State welcome sign. You know what I mean, all the Kiwanis shields and stuff. Sort of official looking. The merchant window clings we did were big, too. As in LARGE. You couldn’t miss ‘em, even from the street. Hahaha. We also made some little register signs in case store employees forgot to tell customers about the program. I really do think we thought of everything.

Downtown Mooresville’s Executive Director still has every Passport that was ever mailed in to her. They’re in a big box in her terrible office (she’ll laugh when she reads that) and she always loved looking through them. There was so much to learn by how people placed their stickers and what they wrote in their passports. Even how they mailed them in was fascinating. One Passport was all but laminated with layered strips of Scotch tape. It was so personal. People really invested time in becoming Downtownies.

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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How to Fake It 'Till You Make It.

Strategy > Branding

Downtown Mooresville is a special place. Its charm (and untapped potential) lured us away from San Francisco when we were looking for better schools and a less hectic lifestyle. We took a look at Downtown, found an old home a block and a half away, moved, set up shop in the old telegraph office along Broad Street across from the old train depot, and quietly kept doing what we were doing back in The City. Only this time, with a freight train passing by and blowing its whistle every day at 1pm. It was so loud you couldn’t plan any phone calls around that time slot. It was awesome (not sarcasm). The old Downtown was only a few blocks long on Main Street, and wore charming but warehousy treasures over its shoulder along Broad Street, too. 

FINAL: The first thing we did was define Downtown Mooresville as, well, Downtown Mooresville. The final logo could easily represent Downtown’s railroad past, but also make sense with shops you’d find there (fashion, restaurants, bars, hairstylists, hardware, etc.), and event that would be held there. It had to play nice with everything you threw at it.

It’s hard to not meet people Downtown. Heck, most of them were neighbors as it turned out. One of those neighbors turned out to be Kim Atkins. She’d had successful career in the printing business and became a shop owner on Main Street. It didn’t work out. Rather than do what anyone would have done (curse Downtown and never return), she did the opposite and was elected the Executive Director of the Downtown Commission. Our boys went to the same elementary school and had become inseparable pals.

Downtown Mooresville was founded in 1873 along a rail line (yep, trains still use it!). In the 1960’s, Duke Power created the man-made Lake Norman while at the same time, the I77 was created to offer a faster way to motor to Charlotte down south, and Statesville up north. The lake was to the west of Downtown and offered about a jillion miles of lakefront property opportunity. The I77 freeway divided the town in more ways than one. Downtown was considered the poor side of Mooresville. Lake Norman (LKN) was where the money was. Hot-Cha!

BEFORE: Oh, there was clearly nothing happening Downtown when we started this project. Open shops had huge gaps of vacant, papered-over storefronts between them. That’s real bad for encouraging foot traffic and look at the mess. By code, closed businesses had to have their windows papered. So we had the idea to paper them with interesting facts about Downtown. It would pull people through to all the open shops, entertain and educate visitors, clean up the overall look of Downtown Mooresville, and cover up it’s vacancy problem. And, being black and white, it’d be affordable. So many problems solved with one easy solution!

BEFORE: The many brochures (and identities) of Downtown Mooresville, all in circulation at the same time when we started working with them.

Cut to modern times and it’s still the same. One side of Lake Norman has all the Red Robins, Super Targets, and Olive Gardens they can handle. While our side (I live in this part, remember) is a little weathered, but has all the heart and soul of what this town used to be. It didn’t help that Downtown was all but empty, lacking both shops and people. The most going concern though, was really going. Soirée was situated in a beautifully restored building in the center of Downtown and was a destination on any night of the week. The problem was, the few shops and business Downtown were never open when Soirée was pulling in the public. Worse yet, the town was so divided that (and I’m not exaggerating here), 85% of the fancy people on the Lake side didn’t even know Downtown existed!

FINAL: The first step – getting our house in order. With some selective photography we presented the Downtown we wanted people to see. All beautiful old buildings and historic charm. We dressed up Main Street with some handsome, attention-getting, hard-working street banners, nailed down our identity and made ONE exciting brochure.

Sorry. Lots of backstory, but it’s super important (especially if you’re a small town in a similar situation). Downtown was quiet, but not dead. They launched a VERY aggressive event schedule to get folks over the I77 to our side, but they didn’t really have a brand to hang it all upon. Some merchants were calling Downtown “the Dirty Mo” on their social media. Some called it “DoMo” (Downtown Mooresville). Messaging was all over the place and none of it was cohesive or sticking. So Kim asked us for ideas on what to do.

The first thing I recommended was nixing the idea of a clever name altogether. People didn’t even know there WAS an old Downtown in Mooresville. Calling it fancy things would just confuse the issue. It was Downtown Mooresville, so just let it be Downtown Mooresville. You can always make a fun nickname later. They brought us on for branding Downtown and the  next thing I did was lie through my teefs.

FINAL: Next it was time to promote Downtown as a destination. Clockwise from the left: 1. By working closely with the pubs we advertised in, we were able to create uniquely branded templates. 2. Our award-winning program to celebrate fans of Downtown Mooresville. 3. Our first piece of Downtown merch. 4. We created a photobank of amazing images that we could use to show folks what we saw in Downtown Mooresville.

Downtown was tired and mostly empty, but not dead. And with a roster of new events, we had to make it seem like there was a secret party going on over here that the Lake people weren’t privy to. In a nod to our railroad history, I designed a vintage/modern logo lockup with the tag line, It’s Happening Downtown. And that was the big lie. Sort of. It was GOING to happen, it just hadn’t actually happened yet. Operation “Fake It ‘Till You Make It” was in full effect. We started running monthly event ads in the local papers. We installed street banners, made bar coasters, put up signage at our local ballpark. We started doing spreads with an event calendar in the local magazines. We rebuilt the website. We got on social media. All the stuff you need to do before we got really creative.

FINAL: From 2009 to 2017 we’d spread the word about Downtown Mooresville. Clockwise from top left: 1. The website we designed for Downtown. 2, One of many posters we did to promote their crazy amount of fun events. 3. A magazine ad designed to introduce newcomers to Downtown. 4. One of many little quarter page newspaper ads promoting monthly events Downtown.

For example, we made calling cards for Downtown merchants and employees to hand out to other shop and restaurant owners whenever they happened to find themselves in a business they wished was Downtown. A bakery, a great Indian restaurant, that kind of thing. It said, “If you’re reading this, your business should be Downtown.” One the back was an invitation to call Kim Atkins to discuss retail opportunities. OMG, even if you weren’t looking to relocate, it sure made it look like shit was going down in Downtown Mooresville. Super buzz worthy, and it worked. Despite our launching during a recession (always fun), within a year, Charlotte was airing a live prime time news segment about Downtown’s revitalization. Finally, it really was happening Downtown. Lie turned truth.

We’d go on to make fun event posters, TV spots, and even more special little programs. Our custom-made Downtownie™ loyalty program would win an Innovation award from the State of North Carolina. Best of all, Main Street filled up. At its zenith, it reached 95% occupancy. Morning, noon, or night, people were coming to see what was Happening Downtown.

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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How to Rebrand a Company and Make Your Trademark Lawyer Happy.

Design > Logos

MI-Connection, our small, local cable, Internet, and voice client, needed to rebrand with a new name and logo that projected authority and reliability. Our competition were all well-known, out-of-town players: Time Warner, Dish, and Windstream – big and personality-less, it was still a no-brainer they could handle your personal and/or professional digital life. Plus, everyone already knew them.

Discovering a name that is appropriate for a business AND sounds super cool is, well, hard. What’s harder is clearing your super-cool-sounding, appropriate name with legal. Obviously, you can’t start with legal, so you have to have fun thinking of a lot of names, knowing that most of them will go straight into your trademark lawyer’s trash can. To help us spread our thinking out, I made a little graph to work to. 

FINAL: Here’s where we finally ended up! I love the branding process because when the thinking is right, and the work is both responsible and good, you can’t lose no matter what logo the client chooses in the end. I had no idea we’d end up here until we suddenly did. Everyone’s input really put a lot of confidence behind the final final because everyone had ownership.

IMPORTANT GRAPH: So simple, yet pretty useful! On the far left you’ll find names like COMNET or TELEWEB. Stuff that you’ll never get legal clearance for. On the far right you’ll have names like NIMBL or ZING. Crazy names that no one would pick for a communications company. What we wanted (and where we’d end up) is to be just to the left of the “Legal Gold” line in the middle.

On the far left are names you’d expect a cable company to be called. On the far right are crazy ass names that don’t mean anything. Now, the further you get to the left, the more legal trouble you’re going to get into. Same as trying to buy a domain nowadays, it’s next to impossible because all the cool stuff is already taken by similar businesses. The more you go to the right, the more you’re clear with legal because at the far end, these words are silly or completely made-up. Tech-startups thrive in this area with all their misspellings and chicanery. We needed to be in the middle-left. We weren’t a crazy little startup. We needed weight, authority, and familiarity. We started with 300 contenders and it was (painfully) narrowed to 10 before we flung them to our amazing attorney. Three survived and after a few rounds of visual concept boards, we had a winner we felt did the job – Continuum. As we saw it, that’s where your digital life thrived – in the Continuum. We were invisibly working to keep you connected to all the extremes in your life – Work and Play, Family and Friends, Sports and News...and everything in between. The only question was, and this is terrible but true, would people be able to read it and say it? It has two “U”’s after all. So we went out and filmed local folks from the three towns reading the word off a card. They did great, the board was convinced, off we went.

COMP: Once a winning name popped out of legal (Continuum), I could get to work designing marks for it. These are from the first round of black and white ideas. Early on we thought we’d need the name to be Continuum Network, so that’s why you see the “N” in some of these. In the end we decided against it. I still like all of these except the pixelated C on the bottom row. The head of tech at Continuum said it looked like bad reception and we said, “Damn. Good point!”

COMPS: A look at some of the logotype ideas we presented. In the end we nixed this direction altogether because I was nervous about ending up with a problem we had with the old MI-Connection logo – it was so long and skinny that it needed to be really big all the time to be legible. Even thought the one on the bottom right is not as long as the rest, it’s complicated with the dots, so same problem.

Continuum’s logo had to do the same thing the name did: project strength and more than a little corporate backbone. It had to look reliable like it’s got big money behind it, but somehow a be a little, I don’t know...quirky? We presented a LOT of logo / logotype options. All in black and white at first so we could concentrate on how their form alone made us feel. Narrow it down to three and add some color for each.Then the favorite color pallet on all three logos. The three go off to legal, and one came out a winner. The C with the radiating, Wi-Fi-like bands wasn’t the most out-of-the-box idea, but man, it worked so hard doing what we needed done. Especially the familiarity part. It doesn’t take a genius to see that phone service isn’t very important to folks, cable is tanking fast, and Internet is still the future. So if you take away anything from this logo, it should be that we supply Internet. But the bands are different colors, and each color represents a service we provide. And those service icons are locked up with our logo. And eventually, after enough exposure, we’d be able to use just the C at times to communicate our brand, which will be kind of cool. 

COMP: Once we decided on a short list of logos, in come the colors, along with some idea of how it would all live in the wild. A word about color – it had a job to do as well. Because the name and logo was corporate and reliable.and the messaging would push “we’re local”, we needed our color palette to be the bridge between those two things. The colors had to say, we’re respectable, but uniquely different.

BEFORE AND AFTER: On the left is the old logo and to the right is the new brand we created, name and all. I’d had to work with the old logo for years and it was such a pain. There were no variations of it. Not even an all-white knocked out version! So everywhere we used it had to be on a super light color and it had to have LOTS of horizontal room if it was going to be big enough to be read. I was sure to design some flexibility in the new brand I created.

COMP: This is how what we now call the “service bands” could work in the future – playfully weaving in out of our ordinary lives. Quietly busy in the background keeping us connected to the things that are important to us.

I mentioned above that in the Continuum was where our digital lives flow. Through this, and the color-coded services, we got a fun little bonus idea: Why not illustrate the services we provide as bands flowing through the air around us? We explored all kinds of fun ways to use this graphic in the ads (you can see those here) and it gave us an extra bit of brand imagery that we could either pull forward or drop back in the future.

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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How to Turn Good Work Into Great Work.

Strategy > Branding

Stop right here. If you haven’t read about all the MI-Connection drama leading up to the complete rebranding of this company, you really need to catch up. Seriously, otherwise it’s like starting House of Cards from the middle.

FINAL: We had two objectives – look reliable and be local. The name, logo, and color palette were in charge of reliability. We even got a bonus graphic from the very definition of Continuum. The three color-coded services we offered are always seen looping effortlessly behind everything we do.

Caught up? Good. The tri-town-owned cable, Internet, and phone company, MI-Connection, was now doing great. The new advertising was doing well, subscribership was up, negative public opinion had all but subsided (except the die-hard trolls. Haters gonna hate), customer service had reached an all-time quality high and really, the only thing holding the company back was its old identity and all the baggage that came with it (see here). 

BEFORE: Look, I can’t knock this too much because I was the one responsible for cleaning this act up. Take a look at what it was before, for God’s sake. I got this brand cohesive visually, then spent years driving home the super tough messaging that this company was NOT public enemy #1. This hard work worked hard to give us the opportunity to take this company to the next level.

There was a different vibe afoot at MI-Connection and it needed to be defined. Kelly and I worked up some market research with the CMO to find out what the townsfolk REALLY thought about their community-owned communications company. I’ve never been a big fan of focus groups. I’ve been in plenty. It’s expensive and they’re so easily manipulated by whoever is running them (the company who wants positive feedback, the agency who wants the opposite or whatever, etc.). So we launched a sincere, straightforward email questionnaire campaign (nothing fancy, just a Typeform thingy) across MI-Connection’s service footprint, steeling ourselves for the prospect of most everyone either not participating or just trolling us. We were surprised (in a good way). We had an 15% response rate and while a few were ALL CAPS TYPING CRAZY PEOPLE, we got a wealth of feedback from our survey. 

RESEARCH: Welcome to the world of shitty communication company logos. On the left, our regional competition of mostly giant out-of-town providers. And us at the bottom left there. The longest logo and therefore the smallest logo in the bunch. Does it inspire faith in MI-Connection’s abilities? Nope. To the right I give you a smattering of what indie communications companies were up to across the US. Mostly a total shit storm except, in my opinion, ting and fibrant. And maybe Qnet. Clean and simple, sure, but seemingly reliable on logo design alone? Are they able to stand up against our list on the left? Dunno.

Ready for this? People didn’t care that MI-Connection was community owned. Despite the real promise that all eventual profits would be dedicated to buying more emergency services, playgrounds, etc., what people liked most was that MI-Connection was locally owned. Sure, the difference between the two is super microscopic, but it’s real. Because MI-Connection was owned by three towns, this made citizens share holders thus putting them in charge of how the company benefitted their communities. But they didn’t care about that (even though we were always super clear about it). Instead, they responded more positively to having a local alternative to the big providers, which MI-Connection was designed to be from the beginning. The other big takeaway from the survey? People also wanted to believe that their provider was capable and reliable (aka. Duh). We did extensive research into what other indies we’re doing to stand up to the big telecom companies. Turned out, not a lot.

FINAL: Is it just me, or does Continuum look more professional and reliable than Dish and Windstream? Not to be OFD (Own Favorite Designer), but doesn’t Continuum look at least competent in comparison to the other logos?

Next we interviewed employees – with no management present, just Kelly and I, and them. What were they up against? What were they frustrated with? What were their ideas for big and small change? This was super valuable because when all the research was said and done, we presented more than a mere identity to the CEO. We presented a whole new company that would solve the problems we’d discovered. The CEO was on board, and as we explained to the Board of Directors, you can’t just put a new name on this thing and hope people forget what it was. To change perception, you have to change reality. They agreed, but I’ll always remember the words of encouragement the Chairman of MI-Connection’s Board gave me after that presentation. After everyone filed out of the room, he shook my hand, and smiling, said, “Don’t fuck it up”.

PROGRESS CHART: Rebranding a communications company from it’s name to an intern’s email signature can be, um, intimidating. I made this simple chart so the CEO and the board could clearly see the path from start to finish. In every one of the thousands of presentations for each step, I’d use a marker to show where we were in the process. The far left is represents the 300+ names we’d whittle down to favorites, then to a few, then a winner. Then a ton of black and white logo ideas, color exploration, favorites, then final colors., Then we concept the materials with long lead times, while we explored fonts and taglines and stuff, and then on to advertising concepts and a final launch campaign. Everyone found this chart oddly comforting. Even me!

I built out a detailed plan of work and a timeline including the MANY presentations we’d have to make. We needed every commissioner, Mayor, Town Manager, PR folks, etc. to understand exactly why we were doing what we were doing (seriously, in the end we must have made somewhere around 35 presentations). We kicked things off with a broad naming exercise (about 300 name options), then narrowed that down to 10 to run by legal. That narrowed it down to 3 viable names that we presented on visual concept boards of how each name might be treated. Once we had a name approved, it was time to make it a logo. Remember, people want to believe their Internet provider is strong and reliable. That’s the job the name and logo had to do. A ton of more options, a dive into color palettes, and it’s all whittled down to one winner – Continuum.

BEFORE AND AFTER: Amazing how much a nice clean rebrand can improve a look, right? And it didn’t just make the fleet and the building look better. It made the people who work there feel better. Morale goes up, customer service goes up, business goes up. What’s that old saying about raising all ships? That.

There was still one big job left, and that was to make our strong, reliable name look local and friendly. For that we drew inspiration from a different company altogether – Jet Blue. Yeah, the airline. Same kind of problem, really, if you think about it. Reliable, trustworthy name. Fun, un-corporate language, clever amenities and friendly customer service. Lot’s of cool, branded little programs and lots of fun, light icons. And instead of using the same old stock photos of families laughing on a couch in front of giant TV’s, we’d reflect the real, local people who are answering the phones and installing your routers. Honestly, you couldn’t do this if your employees didn’t care, and these people did. It IS the south, after all.

FINAL: We launched featuring employees in all our communications along with influential citizens from all three towns. I like to call this Guilty by Association: “If very outgoing, visible, respected people from my town are not only backing this company, but also publicly endorsing this company, well, it can’t be all THAT bad.” It worked. Eventually we were able to just stick to the heroes of local customer service and let them shine.

FINAL: Some of the advertising featuring the folks who made the Continuum’s promise of excellent, local customer service a reality.

Finally, a tag line to wrap it all up with a bow. Kelly nailed it and I especially love hearing it at the end of every cross-channel TV spot we did, “We’re Local. We’re Limitless. We’re Continuum.” We set off a tease campaign a week early that made it look like a new provider was coming to town (more on that here), and on the big day we let the hounds loose with an education campaign for existing customers (we’re a new company now), and a proper launch to potential customers.

How did it end? Continuum ran this campaign for two years (at this writing it’s still going). In the first year they hired 6 more local customer care specialists and built out a bigger call center. In fact, it worked so well that the debt was starting to be paid down faster than anyone thought it would. Which is when they decided to sell it. Yep, they paid $80M for it and estimated they’d get $56M for it. They ended up getting $80M for it. I’d say it worked pretty well.

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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How to Be Creative for Creatives.

Strategy > Branding

It all started at the big annual toy show in NY, the International Toy Fair. I was there representing Wrybaby and started up a convo in the Wrybaby booth with a nice guy who turned out to be from American Greetings. I don’t even know how we got to it, but he mentioned that they were looking for a way to do something that I can’t write about here (ask me in person and maybe I’ll tell you). I said I had an idea that would work perfectly for that. After the show, I pitched my idea to his boss over the phone. He was the head of American Greetings Properties (AGP). AGP managed licensing for all of American Greetings’ legacy properties like Hollie Hobbie, Care Bears, Madballs, Strawberry Shortcake etc. But they also thought up lots of new stuff, too. They were creating properties to develop themselves or to pitch to companies like Disney and Nickelodeon, and that’s why they took an interest in our idea. It was really out-of-the-box. So the head of AGP loved what we presented and said he wanted to make this idea happen with us. He flew down to visit our office in Mooresville, then he invited us for what would be a super weird visit to the AG mothership in Cleveland (ask me in person and I’ll tell you all about it). Then he dumped us into a really shitty negotiation process with AG’s entertainment lawyers in LA where they continuously threatened to steal our idea outright. Super hardball shitty. I told the lawyers that they and AGP could, literally, to go fuck themselves and hung up on them. And then the AGP boss asked us to rebrand them. Well, first he asked us to design a fun corporate team-building program for the department. And then he asked us to rebrand them. How freaking weird is that!?

FINAL: The whole idea was based on the home page. An island fantasy land of AGP properties where all the dispirit characters could live in harmony. You can check out the website design deets and see bigger pictures here.

BEFORE: This was AGP’s home page when I was brought on. You can see what they tried to do from the start – create a fun-but-not-too-fun envelope that can hold variously styled characters from the 70’s to today (the properties slugged along as a slide show). So, done, right? Sort of. The problem was that it didn’t set AGP up as the creative all-stars they were. It was just a generic box of characters you either knew or didn’t.

And we did it. Which was even weirder. But all of the (very real) unpleasantness aside, it was a cool project and they paid us what we were worth <shrug>. Chalk it up to me always rooting for the underdogs, I guess. Which, despite all the success and billions of dollars they generated, AGP and the team that supported it deserved more respect. We got to meet all the crazy-talented artists and writers on our visit and they seemed like normal, good people. Remember, AGP might be pushing a lot of old brands, but they were also in the business of thinking up of a lot of new, exciting characters and shows. The problem was, when the studios saw they were hearing a pitch from AGP, they thought a couple of corporate grandpas would be shuffling in to show them some old Holly Hobbie shit. The AGP boss wanted to change that perception.

COMPS: Some (not all) of the ideas we presented in the first round to AGP. Each idea included whatever it took to get the concept across. So some ideas came tight with taglines attached. Some were just rough sketches. Clockwise from top left: 1. Freshen up the old characters and spice up the new by presenting each character’s personality in a modern way. 2. Incorporate the characters into a graphic envelope (the safest idea, just in case they freak out over the others), 3. Explore exciting new worlds with AGP. Visit planets and discover unique characters. 4. The world of AGP as an island inhabited by strange, sweet, wonderful, and exotic characters.

American Greetings, duh, already has a brand. We were just giving the one department a new look. We started calling it a “restaging,” because we had to use the AG logo lockup unmolested in anything we did. So the first thing we did was present a whole mess of concepts (from tight to super sketchy) to hang their new skin on. These guys were all artists (and all WAY better than me), so we knew that they’d get what we meant if we showed them loose drawings. We showed them all kinds of directions they could go to solve their problem (as we do for every project). For example, there was one idea about how creative the team in the department was, and all the crazy things that happened in their building on the steady. We’d do a lot of videos, social media (with a focus on Linkdin), email newsletters to the industry, etc. The employees would get a chance to be stars and use their awesome talents to help promote their common cause. I only mention this so you can get an idea of how different each idea was. What they chose was way different. The idea was to refresh the old stuff, pull the new stuff into the spotlight, and bring all the properties together as one. Instead of being the keepers of the old that sometimes had new ideas, AGP would represent a big fun world of full of creative ideas. We’d just take “legacy” out of the conversation altogether.

FINAL: Every pop-up on the AGP website, in every category, would include a strip of bright, clever, modern infographics. One trivia block in each strip would be animated, too, leaving the visitor with a ton of tiny positive impressions of how amazing these properties are, no matter how dated they seemed to you before.

FINAL: We pulled the map theme across everything from their massive trade show booth (back wall pictured above) to Powerpoint presentations. We also gave their team a host of logo lockups they could use wherever in the future. All predesigned and ready to go go go.

The final execution would all bloom (see what I did there?) from a new home page featuring a fanciful, illustrated map of an island filled with AGP’s properties. Visitors would click on any of the characters for a pop-up filled with info on that property along with its licensing opportunities. Kelly and I came up with a ton of fun taglines to support this idea, and they picked our favorite in the end – Happiness Happens Here. As they created new properties, we’d just add ‘em to the island. Once the site as approved and in production, I took the island I’d illustrated and pulled the concept through everything from their giant trade show booth to PowerPoint templates for presentations. The whole thing was modern, unconventional, bright and fun. Just the way AGP wanted to be thought of.

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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