HOW TO MAKE FRAME-BY-FRAME ANIMATION A VIABLE OPTION.

I’ve long loved animation and I have a weird, rich history of not ever getting to do it. Like, really do it. This from the guy who, in dot-com’s infancy, was the ONLY ART DIRECTOR IN SAN FRANCISCO WHO KNEW HOW TO MAKE AN ANIMATED GIF. True story.

When I was studying marketing at the Art Center College of Design in the super late 80’s a Hollywood production company (in an hilariously Cohen-brother-style meeting on Sunset Blvd.) invited me to be a part of a breakthrough, episodic animation project for adults that eventually became some dumb show about a guy named Homer and his weird family who lived someplace called Springfield. If you ever run into me, ask me about this experience because it’s super funny (sometimes I think I dreamt it).

The very first animation I did for Kelly’s marriage book, Hey, I Love You…. The hardest part was building the end title with the book closing. I knew it would be, so I made it so I could swap out the art and use the base animation as a template for every video after.

Once I figured out the basics, it was time to play with more layers, masking and more complicated animations.

Eventually I added unique title art to the front of each new video and kept pushing myself to do more complex scenes.

With all the booty shaking, this was the most detail I put into one of these animated shorts. And the most adventurous transition (to the dropped penny) I’d attempted.

Since the brand calls for stylish simplicity, you’d have to really be paying attention to see that the clip that begins at 00:22 is the most complex frame-by-frame animation so far. Can you guess why?

Soon after, Dick Clark Productions (another funny story) asked me to turn a comic series I’d won an award for in LA into commercial bumpers for a season of American Bandstand. I gave them an enthusiastic “YES” despite not knowing at ALL how I’d actually fucking deliver (it was the late 80’s and we didn’t even have clamshell phones yet for God’s sake!). Shit, I was still in school and only 19, for crying out loud, but I was all about it! When they said it’d be a great unpaid project on my resume, I bounced.

I’ve actually been creeping up on real animation for a bit. In 2017 I created a polished series of successful animated videos for a tech startup by supplying layered illustration files to a talented, local After Effects animator. Then I started a series of time-lapse illustrations that I made for Mr. Dave’s Best. Drawn in real-time, all one take.

But my real opportunity came when I got to promote the marriage book my wife had been contracted to write for Hachett – Hey, I Love You… To research her concept, Kelly had been interviewing all kinds of couples to learn more about all kinds of marriage experiences – the good, the bad, and, yeah, the sometimes terrible. Since I’d designed and illustrated her book to be as unisex and inclusive as possible, Kelly had a cool idea to set those candid insights to stylistic animation that would be right on brand.

Once animations were done, they were easily converted to animated gifs. Like this endless sharing of Hey, I Love You…

SImple, yes. Pain in the ass, not really. What I love about conceptual animation is that your can do a lot with little when you put a little thought into it beforehand.

Simple, yes. Pain the ass, also yes. But I do love this tedious-to-execute animated gif of the endless search for love. This was a part of the puck to fill Giphy with our cute little animations.

This concept for this animation was pretty simple so it had to get juiced up with some slightly difficult renderings of the word bubbles and the chair bounce on the refresh. Not hard, but nice thinking, I think. haha.

Frame-by-frame, onion skinning, multiple layers, Procreate, and my left hand – all in one photo. But this is what goes into every sequence on this page (and more on the Hey, I Love You… Vimeo channel.

The process wasn’t much different than the video work I did on those earlier tech-startup videos. I’d discovered the Procreate illustration app for those and it was a short leap to teach myself how to use its ridiculously simple animation assist to onion-skin myself to frame-by-frame-glory. Trying to do a whole video in one file was technically impossible anyway due to file size limitations which is fine because it would also have been an unworkable hellscape of layers to deal with. So I animated all the scenes as short clips. Once I had a scene down, I exported it as an mp4 file thatI then pulled into Adobe Premiere. There I could loop, extend, or slow, depending on how the VO timing worked out. And if I ran into trouble, I’d just zip back to the iPad to quickly animate a filler sequence or fix bugs in the scenes. Easy squeezy. 

Soon we had over 40 short animations for Hey, I Love You… And there’s more in production. It’s funny to watch my progress as I became more comfortable through experience. And the best part is that since I did all the animations as individual sequences, now we can mix and match previous work to make new narratives in just minutes. Or animated gifs of those scenes. Despite having so many options to economically repurpose the work into the future, I still prefer animating new ideas since I figured out how to do it so easily!

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

---

How to Make the Most of an Hour.

There’s a story I love to tell, and I can’t remember who told me, but it goes like this – Pablo Picasso is walking through a park and a woman recognizes him and asks him to draw her portrait. He says, “Sure.” (Maybe in Spanish) and he starts sketching. A few minutes later, he hands her the drawing. It’s amazing. It captures the very essence of her character. Then he says, “That’ll be $5000, please.” The woman is dumbfounded. “$5,000!? But it only took you five minutes!”, she says. Picasso simply looks at her and says, “No, madam, it took me my whole life.”

Now, Pablo Picasso is known to have been kind of a jerk, and by most any definition, I’m no Picasso. Most creatives use this story to explain why experience should cost a lot. But I like to tell it to explain how quickly good work can be done by someone who knows what they’re doing. I typically work with clients in one of three ways – on retainer, on projects (short and long), and by the hour. And, unlike Picasso in that story, my hourly rate is not $60,000.

This is that dog bar thing I’m going to tell you about. The brainstorming workshop was so fun. We were just throwing out ideas and I was sketching them out like mad on a giant pad. At the end of a couple of hours the walls were FULL of these sheets and it was clear which one was the “winner”. A town for dogs, built by dogs. That’s why everything is spelled adorably wrong. On the right are my drawings for the architects and investors showing what “buildings” would occupy the enormous space.

My hourly rate is $120, which comes to $960 per day (8 hours). And, believe me, if I’m working hourly, I’m making the most of every minute. Truth be told, you’re not just buying just an hour of my attention because I’m not a robot who can turn off thinking about your challenge after 60 minutes. I love what I do, and I’m going to be thinking about your business while I’m at the gas station, while I’m in the shower (sorry, but it’s true), when I’m doing housework on the weekend, and when I’m sleeping. I’ve literally dreamt up solutions to projects before. How could I ever charge you for being interesting enough to not be able to think about!?

So what could I do for you in mere hours? Lots. I’m a bootstrapper’s delight. I had a client who wanted a theme for a dog bar and couldn’t afford much. I figured out that the most affordable way to go was to let me do a handful of hours of lead thinking and together we’d throw down for a couple of hours brainstorming ideas against that structure. In the end we nailed a direction with all the details, and for another handful of hours, I worked those details up into drawings and a presentation she could show her team, investors and architects. (Another benefit of being a strategist, designer, marketer, and illustrator). So those handfuls of hours resulted in the ability to fully explain and present an experience that didn’t exist before we started working together.

Another thing done in just a handful of hours. The designer knew he wanted a lawn chair and a cooler to represent a Day Off for Fall River Brewing. I threw some his way, he chose one, we refined it together (had to replace that angry lady in the background with an abandoned lawn mower), and a beautiful beer can was born! Go buy some!

Hey, look! More dog stuff! Same dog bar client, different thing. They wanted a new name and had a list of contenders but didn’t know how to proceed. Their budget didn’t allow for the process I apply to projects like this, so they bought a few hours to see what was possible. I sketched out a ton of possibilities that matched the nature of their business and offered some ideas they hadn’t thought of.

So what could you and I do in just one hour? Lots. Talk, for one. And by “talk” I mean YOU talk. I can listen to your hopes and dreams and recommend ways to get them into action. But I do more than listen well.

Strategy: Run your existing plan by me. Use me as a sounding board. Or tell me what your partners hate about your vision and I can advise you on a plan to compromise. Hire me to present your vision to the board. Or investors.

Design: Share challenges with product, packaging, sourcing, or sales materials. Hire me to design a poster or two for your event. Make your product instruction manual easier to follow. Clean up your brand identity a little. Make branded email signatures for everyone.

Advertising:  I can do some creative writing for you. Maybe punch up some existing copy. Help you set a social media content schedule that makes sense for your brand and audience. I could lay out a template for your print or digital ads to occupy. Come up with a handful of taglines to consider.

Illustration: I could draw up some product ideas you’ve been kicking around. Or maybe do a few illustrative cartoons for a presentation you’re giving. I could create one-off illustrations for packaging, your blog or website, or even social media.

I’ll be honest here, most creatives with my experience don’t do hourly. But I love it because it’s the first step to great projects. Not for me, for you! Every hour we work together will get you closer to realizing the big goals you’re trying to achieve. And you don’t need Picasso for that. 

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

---

HOW TO DRAW OVER 300 ILLUSTRATIONS FOR A 258 PAGE BOOK THAT'S NOT EVEN A PICTURE BOOK.

My wife wrote a book called, Hey, I Love You… and she asked me to design it. Then she asked me to illustrate it. It’s in the contract with our publisher. They paid me in the advance to do 50 illustrations for the book. Well, they paid Kelly to have me do the work. Hahaha. Anyhoo, you know how many illustrations I did for the book? Over 100. And that’s why I like being a strategic designer who can draw. I didn’t HAVE to overdeliver because it’s my wife’s project. I did it because it simply HAD to be done. I’ll explain.

Hey, I Love You… by Kelly Sopp. Illustrations (so many illustrations) by me, Dave Sopp. This is an early drawing I made for the Hey, I Love You… website because we didn’t have an actual copy of the book to show off. Hey, we still don’t!

Kelly’s book is beautiful. Hey, I Love You… gives couples practical marriage wisdom, and an effortless way to exchange heartfelt words that need to be said, or unsaid, or aren’t said often enough. It’s so unique. Not just because of the way you use it or how anyone who’s married can find incredible value in it. It’s unique in the space of Relationships and Marriage. Have you ever looked in that section? It’s D-E-P-R-E-S-S-I-N-G. It’s mostly for people trying to fix what’s very broke or, in the dustier lower shelves, trying to teach people how to NOT get into that situation in the first place. Kelly’s book tackles all that (and more) handily and expertly, but in such a refreshingly positive way. This is starting to sound like I’m the president of her fan club (I am, but I’m also the president of every businesses fan club on this site), but it’s important because when you illustrate a book, it’s not about your talents. It’s all about the content.

Didn’t I just say that I don’t have a sample of the book? I don’t. So I did that Illustration to use while I made my own dummy! I’m like that. Anyhoo, now you get to see what the book design looks like. Super airy and light. That yellow is so bright and happy and positive (just like the writing.). Below are some illustrations of how the book works – “it puts the bookmark in the book.” (Sorry, Silence of the Lambs joke).

I’ve collected my favorites (but not all my favorites) to share. The book is so light and bright and airy, so the illustrations really needed to just be seasoning for the words Kelly wrote. I chose a loose style using the colors we already established in designing the book together. The drawings are cute and happy, but still rough around the edges and almost sketchy, just like my marriage. Kidding! Just seeing if you’re paying attention.

I tried to keep everything as simple as possible at every level. I use three brushes: Rough Crayon, Tight Crayon (for any type), and Messy Dotted. There are only three colors: White, Yellow, and Black. Even conceptually I tried to be super simple without being lazy. I mention that the Life Preserver was an easy out, but I tried to at least make it look really interesting. And it turned out to be one of my favs.

In this case, the content is composed of two parts. The first is an introduction to the book to explain it (it’s that unique) and give you an entertaining breakdown of tried and true marriage best practices. The second part is the bulk of the book - bookmarkable spreads that convey your romantic thoughts, encouraging words, mild concerns, deepest worries, and your most sincere apologies. That’s a lot of emotional content, right? Sound kind of heavy? Well, it IT IS! And that was what made it so tricky.

The Hey, I Love You… bookmarkables are divided into five categories. The first two, Romance and Encouragement, were super easy and fun. Then it started getting challenging. I feel like such a baby even writing that because you honestly, have NO idea how much thought and research went into the writing of this book. For example, consider this spread: I’m Worried About You. / It seems like you might be having a tough time right now. Want to talk about it? While the sentiment is clear, it’s also intentionally vague. Because this bookmark may be appropriate for someone who’s going through a really hard project at work as well as someone who might be suffering from deep depression. The overall tone of the book is upbeat, but it’s not tone deaf. As a person who identifies as “married for more than 25 years”, I’ve (we’ve) experienced a lot of the experiences in this book. So what would you illustrate to represent that bookmarkable message?

For every message in the book, I had to put myself in the shoes of the bookmarker AND the recipient in both the most mild of circumstance AND the most dire. All the while I had to keep with the book’s upbeat voice and palette. For example,“I’m Worried About You.”. For this I illustrated a door outlined in white in a very dark room. Under the door there’s a bright yellow light showing from the other side. From other side comes a bright, hopeful love note that travels a playful path into the room. Fine for anyone who’s just sort of shut off emotionally from their loved one and open to interpretation by the recipient to speak to just how dark that room is that they’re holed up in. See what I mean?

Of course, not everything in the book called for something this heavy. Even in the serious parts. If you know me, you know I can’t stand an easy way out. But for a small part of this assignment, the easy way out led to more time and effort to tackle the harder stuff. “Maybe We Can Learn a Lesson in This.” = Graduation cap. “I Will Never Give Up on You.” = Life Preserver. Not lazy. Just accurate, appropriate, and efficient to tackle the harder spreads. Besides, remember what I said about the book not being about the illustrations? It’s true. They were always meant to be seasoning for the content.

At this writing, I’m still making more and more drawings. Once we sent the final files to our publisher, there was the website and all the marketing materials to produce. Right now I’m at over 300 unique illustrations for this project. This isn’t even counting the animated book trailers and animated gifs viewed by over 3 million on GIPHY. I hope there’s even more to add to this story when the book is available October 5. If you want to be in the loop, subscribe to the Hey, I Love You…Newsletter. If you preorder the book before October 5, you’ll get a cool little Sneak Preview Gift. from Kelly and I :-)

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

---

How to Give the People What They Want.

Illustration > Mysterio Predicts

I’m not Mysterio. Well, sometimes I had to be at trade shows. But I originally drew Mysterio with no thought of him being me. Some people also go to Zoltar, the mechanical mystic from the movie, Big. Nope. It’s funny that our collective image of exotic mentalists are all kinda the same guy. I’ve got that big, beautiful Taschen book of Magic and when you look through the history of magician-types, those guys are all doing the same look! For the branding work I did for Continuum (a communications company), I talk about avoiding cliches. But, honestly, sometimes you have to give the people what they expect if you want them to understand something. Oh, sorry, if you don’t know, Mysterio is a mystic who predicts your baby’s future on a little t-shirt. See? Totally appropriate and no way around it. I toyed with using a top hat instead of a turban, but he looked too Fred Astaire. Like he’d take your baby tap dancing.

FINAL: Mysterio…such a jerk. But being serious makes him believable. I didn’t really have a lot of reason to draw him outside his logo, but once in a while I needed him to have a body. You may say “lazy” but I thought it was funny to keep his logo head exactly the same in any scenario. He’s so INTENSE! hahahah.

SKETCHES: In 2006 I started trying to figure out what Mysterio was going to look like. I distinctly remembering being bored in a trade show booth in San Francisco, so that’s why the three stacked sketches are so shitty. But that last one really seemed to be the one, no? I remember I didn’t do that many before heading in that direction. The strip of heads up top was me working my way toward finish (far right). I’d never done shading like Mysterio seemed to demand (the etching style). It’s hard! Anyhoo, once I got to a finish I did there little extras for the packaging. In the beginning I softened Mysterio by saying he also sewed all the shirts himself.

EXTRAS: Once I got comfortable drawing in the Mysterio style, I started doing little extras here and there for customers. Here’s an early version of Mysterio’s origin story that I did as a free comic download. To the right are the Spirit Animals from Mysterio’s free downloadable Cootie Catcher.

SKETCHES: Some early rough pencil sketches for Mysterio’s children’s book, A Future Just for You!

FINAL: Illustrated spreads from Mysterio’s picture book, A Future Just for You.

As the Joker once said, “Why so serious?” After all, it’s for a BABY. Exactly. I wanted Mysterio to look intense to add some gravitas to the thing. Look, imagine if he was some happy winking cartoon dude, it’d ruin the whole thing. The way he’s STARING, part of you has to wonder...will this prediction really come true? Also, this was made to be a baby shower gift. So it’s all theater when it’s opened in front of a party. Looks serious, ends up being ridiculous. Get it?

Still I had ideas on how to soften him up a bit. I had a whole backstory planned for him, like how he sewed the shirts himself and somehow imprinted the shirts with a blast from his eyes, but I never played it up. I once made a comic book about his origin story. It was an extra credit free download for a while at wrybaby.com. And, of course, I illustrated a children’s picture book about Mysterio’s powers. That really softened him up. I even brought him to life on Instagram for a while! Hahaha. In the end, I think I prefer him looking like his tagline description: Uncanny! Almost Scary!

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

---

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

---

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

---

How to Make Everything Come from One Place.

Design > Posters

Before we started working on the branding, Downtown Mooresville had just scheduled an exhausting number of events to draw traffic. Cruise-ins, Art Walks, Food Trucks, Farmer’s Markets, so many events. At some point the Executive Director of the Downtown Commission and I likened the Downtown Commission to a corporation that runs a mall. All the vendors can be themselves in the mall, with their own advertising and signage and what not. But if they did any advertising, they’d do well to include the Downtown logo. Because that’s where people could find their shop. Look, tell me the actual address of your local mall. Right? Or neighborhood even!? The same thing goes for the events. They were all wildly different, but at least now, they could identify as being held in this “mall”.

Anyhoo, I’ll shut up and throw a bunch of Downtown posters at you now. Enjoy!

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

---

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

---

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

---

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

---

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

---

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

---

How to Redesign a Logo Without Redesigning a Logo.

Design > Logos

The objective was to “restage” a department of American Greetings (AG). American Greetings Properties wanted a new image, a new website, a fun tagline – the whole shebang. They also wanted a new logo, with one caveat: we couldn’t change the logo. The AG logo had to stay locked up, rose and all, with a very-light-if-not-white background. The good thing about the map/island concept they chose, is that it gave me a lot of visual cues to work with – the most important being the masthead for the maps legend. We’d already had a simple design for the legend bar that would be on the website, so I worked up a bunch of solutions to top it off properly. Locking it up in a structure let me off the hook for having to always keep the background white (or close to it). The logos had to be really simple to match the illustration style I used, so it was sort of painful going through old map books for inspiration and seeing how beautifully designed they could be. I did all of this in 2013, so if it looks a little hipster-familiar today, rest assured it didn’t in 2013. :-)

OPTIONS: So many options! I really rubbed my brain all over how to deal with getting the AGP logo to work as is in the map legend concept. These are just a small sample of what I tried (the row along the bottom) along with what they approved in the end (up top in the final image). I’m pretty happy with the final I think. Less all about being piratey. and a more restrained.

INCIDENTALS: I’m known to proclaim that “extra credit is for chumps”. Because even adding the slightest bit of delight will likely go unnoticed by all. The tiniest bit of extra work will go unrewarded. And no matter how passionately I believe this to be (sadly) the truth today, I can never stop doing extra credit. I guess it’s the Walt Disney fan in me. Here are some bonus lockups I did for AGP, so that when I was off the biz their designers would have some goodies to work with. I also left a bunch of illustration extra credit and you can see all that stuff here.

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

---

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

---