Episode 87: Creative Champions

If you are a stuck or frustrated creative and want to get paid to do what you love, let's talk. https://yourworkisagift.com/coaching

You can be talented, hungry, and stubborn as hell and still stall out if nobody has your back when the real decisions get made. 

We get personal about that missing ingredient: the champion. I tell the story of Stephen Brower, an art director I met early in my New York design days, and how his trust gave me room to take risks, develop taste, and stop shrinking my voice to fit someone else’s comfort.

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Transcript

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Going Alone Is Too Hard

SPEAKER_00 0:00

All right, let's do this shit. Often, in uh teaching or coaching scenarios, um I have to remind people that you don't go it alone. It's too hard to go alone. You need help. We all need help. I get help. Every guru has a guru, right? Um I have had many people in my career help me, guide me, work alongside me. And I've even had a few champions. And that's what I want to talk about today.

Why The Podcast Adds Video

SPEAKER_00 0:49

Um, if you are familiar with my podcast, you will know that um this is new. This is being recorded both as a podcast and as a video, because there are going to be some situations coming up that I need to share visuals. I want to show you things. I want to show and tell. Um, because I not only have something to say, I got things to see. Um so what I'd like to do is uh occasionally it's going to be a video as well, um, as a podcast. Okay. So we'll get used to it. We'll figure it out. You will you will champion this or you will bitch and moan and we will all learn together from it. Okay, let's do this.

Starting Out In New York Design

SPEAKER_00 1:36

Um I'm going to talk about a dear friend of mine named Stephen Brower, who's an art director back when I was in New York when I was starting out. Um I moved to New York to become a designer when I was 19. And I moved there specifically to become the world's best poster designer. But that's a whole nother story. And I got to New York and I realized there were no jobs specifically for designing posters. Um, so I took the next best thing where there was a lot of freelance work available and I was very familiar with, which was book jackets. And I was familiar with them because I was brought up in a library. And that's another story, too, for another time. Um, but I started out freelancing, and I got lucky as soon as I, I think three weeks after I was asked to leave the School of Visual Arts, um, and that's another story. Um, I had put together a portfolio of three covers, three fake book covers, and I went out looking for work. And I got work right off the bat. They sensed something, the art directors sensed I knew what I was doing, which I did not. Um and I was successful for a while until I got a little cocky, and I started realizing I had my own sense of opinion, my own sense of color, my own sense of format and size. I had my own sense of humor and the macabre and my own sense of sexuality that I wanted to play out in my work. Um, and I quickly learned that um art directors were not interested in that. I started by going into book into libraries and and uh bookstores and looking at them and going, oh, that's what they look like. And I started out making book covers that looked like book covers, which I quickly learned was not interesting to me. And I was getting paid good money to do that. So there's a little bit of a conflict. But I started putting my own opinion, uh, my own thoughts and my own humor into my work. And the art dredgers were not interested. And I quickly learned that in order to make good money as a designer in New York, at that time, possibly now, um, the best thing I could do was not have an opinion. Shut up, do the work, right? Go home and buy something. Groceries. Um, and I also learned something else. I also learned that many, not all, but many art directors, creative directors were not what I went to New York for. I went there because it was the city of light, the city of vision, the place where, you know, if you could make it there, you could make it anywhere. And I realized that a lot of the art directors were errand boys, right? You'd you'd you'd show them the work, you'd send the work to them, or bring it, you generally dropped it off, and they would go and show it to the editors, and then come back and say, Well, the editors think, and I'm like, Well, I don't give a fuck what the editor, what do you think? What do you what's your job here? I can bring it in the other room there and get shot down or fight for it, whatever. Um, and I realized I had to go find my art

When Clients Want No Opinion

SPEAKER_00 5:08

directors, the people I could work with. So I went to the bookstore, and and this is pre-internet, um, this is pre-a lot of things. And I went to the bookstore and I started looking at the subject matter that I wanted. I started looking at poetry books, I started looking at philosophy books, I started looking at the at the the the um the fringe element books. And and a publisher came up consistently with a couple of things I was looking at. It was called Citadel Press, and they were in Sea Caucus, New Jersey. I got in touch with them, made an appointment with the art director, and um on the day of my appointment, and this was when you had a black portfolio, you had a black box with two little latches, and you used to drop it off. You'd go to the, you'd go to McMillan or HarperCollins, it was Harper and Roe then, or you'd go to St. Martin's Press or Simon and Schuster, and you would drop off your portfolio. And luckily, if you were lucky, you had two, so you could have them at different houses, and people would look through and go, oh yeah, I like this guy. Call him up. And so I had to go show my portfolio in Seacaucus, New

Finding Stephen Brower At Citadel

SPEAKER_00 6:24

Jersey. And the appointment was in the morning, and I woke up and it was raining, and there's no train from Brooklyn, where I live in Sunset Park, over to Seacaucaucus, New Jersey. So I got on my motorcycle and I rode in the rain with my book and got there, and I met Stephen Brower and started a relationship there and with him that I did not know was going to change my life. Um Steven was unique in um in his position. One, when I went to Seakaucus, it was in a um an industrial complex. It was one of many faceless buildings um in this uh um in this very dull um commercial spot. Um we started working together. He gave me a couple of covers, and I used this as an opportunity to take chances because I realized quickly that Steven was the guy I could do this with. He got it. He got it. He understood what I wanted, he understood, um, he worked with me because he wanted that level of danger. He had a relationship with the publishers, right? And kind of knew that they wanted to make a mark, they wanted to bust into the scene. Um and the funny thing is, I think within a year of working with them, and this was not because of me, it was just because of some some moves that the publishers made and some moves that Steve made. Within a year, Citadel Press was no longer in Seacaucus, New Jersey, but it was on um, it was in a building on, I believe it was 58th Street and Madison Avenue, right? So they had moved up a bit. So now I got to get on the train and go and get work from Steve. Um and with Steve, I've I was given books of they were reprinting a lot of older books, books that were printed in the 30s and the 40s and the 50s, the books about jazz, um, and books about countercolor, cut counterculture, like like um, like um the books on psychedelia and books on LSD.

Covers That Got Past Gatekeepers

SPEAKER_00 8:52

Um and we we he we got a bunch of crazy, um, I got a bunch of crazy subject matters that really allowed me to play. Um, something like this. Like this is a this is the the uh a cover proof. Um The Secrets of Love Magic, How to Find a Lover. So I took a chance here and just made this fishing reference, right? Um we did this book as well, The Werewolf of Paris. And I thought, what's scarier than werewolves' teeth's teeth are human teeth. And of course, with the these werewolf books, you always have like blood splattered everywhere on it. So I put that on the back. It was my homage to the cliche. This was a very particular, bizarre one that we worked on together. It's called The Crazy Green of 2nd Avenue. And this um this Turkish writer said that he learned to speak English in the movie theaters on 42nd Street. So this is a very bizarre, almost pornographic uh book. So I put this uh mound of green pubic hair on the cover, and of course a uh um um uh a fig leaf on the back that usually, you know, that usually covers it. Um and it went through because it's called the crazy green of 2nd Avenue, and it was green, right? It made sense. Um and then after it was published, Steve told me the story that one of the editors came to him and said, Hey, you know that book? Put the green on it? He says, What is that? And Steve said, It's the green streetlight. And he's like, Yeah, okay. And the reason it got through is because they didn't know what they were looking at. Steve did, and I did, because we talked about it, but they didn't know what they were looking at. Um, but Steve was a champion for me and another other uh a number of other creators. And the reason was he would fight for you. He would fight for your ideas, he would take the book into um into the editor's office while you were there, right? And Steve was a big guy. Um he was tall and he was heavy set and he was very sweaty. I don't he was always sweaty. I always loved that about him. Um, and the the the the the ultimate the ultimate book that we worked on together, which changed a lot of work for me, was he gave me, um he said, Hey, I want you to redesign this book.

The Johnny Got His Gun Fight

SPEAKER_00 11:29

It came out a bunch of years ago, and we're gonna put a new cover on it. And he said, it's called Johnny Got His Gun. And I was like, oh, no, I know that book. I love that book. I love Dalton Trombo, the author. Um, I said, I can't redesign it. It's a classic. He said, well, think about it. We're gonna, we're gonna reprint it and we want a new cover on it. And I thought about it a bit and I thought, well, it is a great opportunity to work on something that that I care about. Whether it's a classic book, whether it's important, whether people are gonna see it, I don't know. So what I did is I re I re-upped the cover. The original cover, you may know, um, is this. Who's who designed this? I put his name on it. Oh, Don Record did the original design of this. So I put a new cover on it and I updated it because this was written after the, this was written in 1939, after the First World War. And it's a book about pacifism. And I updated it to use um um a uh Marines getting off a helicopter on Hamburger Hill in Vietnam. And I also used it as an opportunity to try out something new with typography where I'm using the wrest type. Not the right type. The right type is stencil, the right type is makes it look like it's on a munitions box or, you know, military. And I used the the wrongest type on this, which is actually this whole motif of drawing on a photograph and using that type, um, I reused when I did my first poster, which was the dead Indian Celebrate Columbus. Um, so I brought this to Steve, and I brought it as a comp. The three-dimensional, you know, I painted all the little lines like there was no computer, and we just did everything by hands. We uh we got very good with our hands. And I brought this to him, and he was like, Okay, let's do this. He said, wait here. He gets up and goes um off down the down the hall, which I know where he's going, and he goes into the uh into the um the editor's office, and I moments later I hear a ruckus. I hear all kinds of all kinds of yelling and bellowing. And um then it gets really silent, and I hear a door slam, and Steve comes back, and he's he's red-faced and sweaty, but he's got a shit-eating grin on his face, and he says, We're gonna do it. So he got this cover approved for me, uh, for the book, but for me. Um, that was the kind of guy that Steve was. Um, in my career, I'm lucky that I've had a couple of champions like him, a couple of people who who um helped me find my voice. He helped me, he gave me the, he ran block and set pick so I could have some elbow room, so I could figure out who I was at a as a designer, figure out where where the taste, um, where the taste level was between me and the audience or me and the client, and how to, how to, how to kind of make maneuver my way there. Um he allowed me the freedom to experiment. Not everything got through, and because not everything was was great, not everything was genius. It was a heady time for me to really just experiment and try a lot of things. But Stephen allowed all of that. He allowed me to become me. He allowed me to learn how to set boundaries for myself, what I, what, what shit I would eat or not eat. I got very tired working for the other publishers because I was on the losing end of compromise all the time. And I thought this is no way to live. I have an opinion. I want, I want to be a great designer. And the way you become a great designer is you set boundaries for yourself, and then you have someone like Steve who respects those and helps push them further.

Losing A Mentor And Stepping Up

SPEAKER_00 15:56

I found out last week that uh Steve just died. He had cancer. I didn't know about it. Not a lot of people knew about it, but Steve just died. Steve was a great art director, he was a great designer. He was a champion for a lot of people, not only uh the creators, the designers, but a lot of the authors. He was a champion for a lot of musicians. Sorry. Musicians whose projects he's helped along. He was a champion for a lot of students who went to Merrywood, where he taught. He was an educator, a designer, um, he was a gentleman. He was he was he was kind and he was gentle and he was a good man. Um and now that he's gone, we all need to step up. We all need to be that person for everybody else. We need to be the champion now for others to help others make their way. And especially now, especially in a time now, uh, with with with looming AI in our cre in our in our in our and the the the the overabundance of Adobe in our lives and in our work. We need to be that. We need to become somebody like Steve.

Take Care And Keep Creating

SPEAKER_00 17:26

Okay? Listen, I'm James Victory. I love you. And I believe in you, even when you don't. Uh, let's be kind to each other, let's take care of ourselves, let's take care of our bodies, exercise, drink a lot of water, get some sleep, take care of this, exercise it, read. Guys, I love you. I'll talk to you later. Bye-bye.