Some work while at UT
I attended the University of Texas in Austin from fall of 1968 to spring of 1974. Yes, that's 6 academic years. But everyone said that one's college years were the best time of their life, so I thought - what's the rush to leave this environment? I also had 3 majors. I began at UT doing what I did in high school - designing stage sets, so I majored in Technical Theater/Set Design in the Drama Department. I then switched to Graphic Design in the Art Department and finally to Advertising in the Department of Advertising. Below are a few design projects I did for class or for free-lance work.
Awards and honors
Director, UT Advertising Club, 1973-74
Outstanding Advertising Intern, Dallas Advertising League, 1973
Logo contest winner, UT School of Communication, 1972
President, Sigma Chi Fraternity, 1971
National Commission on Rushing & Pledging, Sigma Chi Fraternity, 1971
Pledge Trainer and President, Sigma Chi Fraternity, UT Austin, 1970 & 1971
Advisor, Freshman Experience, 1971
Advisor, Freshman Orientation, 1970, 1971
Round-Up committee chair, UT Austin, 1970
Sigma Chi Fraternity, 1969-1973
Assistant Ride Foreman, Six Flags over Texas, 1968-69
Majors
Fall 1968 - Spring 1969: Drama, Set Design
Fall 1969 - Fall 1970: Art, Graphic Design
Spring 1971 - Spring 1974: Advertising, BS degree
Employment
Dobie Mall Promotions Director, 1974
Designer and Copywriter, Highland Mall, Austin, 1974
Pearl magazine, ad sales, UT, 1970s
Baker's Dozen, Dobie Mall, counter service, early 1970s
Texas State Trooper cafeteria, busser & dishwasher, early 1970s
2-J's Hamburgers, busser, fountain drinks, early 1970s
UT Freshman Orientation Advisor, 1970-71
Gordon Sibeck & Associates, Architects, intern, 1967
Six Flags over Texas, Arlington, ride operator, summers 1967-70
Papers and published works
We Need More Traffic, Assessment and proposal for Dobie Mall, Austin, September 1974
New Employee Orientation Manual, Dallas Times Herald, 1973
Chapter Manual, Alpha Nu Chapter, Sigma Chi fraternity, UT Austin, 1971
An Analysis of Alpha Nu of Sigma Chi, UT Austin, 1970
Drama major: Greg Grove, George Cook, Joanie Prather, Ronny Strew, Trisha, The Great Cross-Country Race, Celebration, Gypsy (role: stagehand), April 21-26
Faculty: Franny (Dance), John Rothgeb (sets), David Nancarrow (lights), Paul Reinhardt (costume), Arnold (Acting), Bob Chambers (stagecraft)
Class projects for Theater Design I: 7x14 or 8x16
1. Line: Black & white bands form lines
2. Form: Volcano structures with beams sticking out for King Lear
3. Plane: 3 Boxes of intersecting planes inside
I bought most supplies and balsa wood at the University Co-op on the Drag, across from The Union:
Above: Drama Building Stage Design classroom.
Art Building, 2nd floor plan. Drawing Room. Below: Design room.
Below: Concept for a poaster: Contemporary Painting. No single image would work well to represent the variety of work in the show. I proposed a type treatment that would be it's own work of art. The teacher wasn't too thrilled, but the class voted it as the winner.
The University of Texas in Austin has long been associated with its longhorn mascot. While doodling the letters UT and overlapping them, I noticed that they formed the abstract shape of a longhorn head, from the front. One can also perceive the 'Hook 'em Horns' sign and football goalposts. Its probably not appropriate for a collegiate logo but it was a fun exercise. Design: sometime between 1996 and 2002
The School of Communication at the University of Texas in Austin was established in 1972. The school consisted of the Departments of Advertising, Journalism, Radio-Television-Film, and Speech Communication. The new school held a contest for a logo, an identity that could represent the School. One of the Advertising classes I was in assigned a project to enter that contest. I relished the opportunity to make a mark (pun?) on the UT campus. I went through the usual research of communication devices, icons for the departments, and type treatments expressing communication and journalism. Nothing was quite working. I could not find an element to represent each department that could be part of a cohesive identity.
Purging those concepts left me with the realization that the identity should represent the one commonality shared by all entities in the school - the definition of communication. I researched that and sketched ways to graphically show the process of communication. I broke it down into components. Waves of intensity moving back and forth, arrows showing sender and receiver, and other arrows in a circular motion showing the cycle of communication. I refined the sketches into a simple, yet complex mark. The typography that effectively respected the mark is a font called Microgramma. The letterforms have a squared shape that relate to the mark and to the architectural themes of the new building that housed the school.
My proposal, submitted to the Dean's staff, was selected. It received praise for being contemporary, grounded in meaning - there was solid rationale for the design decisions, and appropriate for the School of Communication. The mark was used on handouts, programs, posters and other printed materials throughout the school and university. I doubt it is still in use today at the university. Concept, design, and production: 1974
The concept: The definition of communication represented by:
1. Waves: message, information
2. White arrows: sender, receiver; back and forth
3. Black arrows: the cycle of continuous communication
The shape of the mark and the text was inspired by the mass and the shape of the windows in the new Communications building.
Below are sketches showing exploration of arrows and type. I don't recall what inspired the eureka aha moment of the arrows and the wave lines to represent communication.
During construction of the new Communications building, I scratched the logo and my initials, JRW, into the concrete by the curb on 24th Street, on the north side of the building. The photos below show faint traces of the logo after 34 years of weathering. Logo at the top, JRW at the bottom.
Personalized name tags at UT summer orientation
The summer after graduating high school I attended an orientation session at the University of Texas in Austin. It was fun and gave me a good intro to college life. I admired the advisors as they seemed to enjoy what they were doing. After my freshman year, I interviewed to become a summer orientation advisor. It was a rigorous interview process but I was accepted and began the advisor training. We had a few classes on campus and a weekend retreat in the hill country outside of Austin where we experienced sensitivity sessions, learned the information that would help us mentor students, and had a great time playing and bonding in the hills and rivers of Central Texas. I signed up to serve several sessions that summer. Each session lasted about 5 days. We spent the two days between sessions just resting and kicking back. There were two advisors for each wing of attendees. The summer of 1970 orientation was held in the new Jester Center - at that time, the largest college dorm in the country, housing 3,000 students with 8 cafeteria lines, a mini-mall of shops, bookstore, a post office, and a cinema. The next year we were in Kinsolving dormitory on the north side of campus. Some of our duties: campus tours, advising, floor meetings, and testing sessions. The retreat and the summer sessions still stand as some of the greatest highlights of my life. It was a great group of people, a lot of fun, and a valuable introduction to leadership and teaching.Each Orientation Advisor was issued a standard blank generic nametag. We were to write in our name and position (Advisor). I saw that empty tag (or the blank back) as a canvas to express more than just handwriting, as shown below (you'll notice the tags say Bob, not Jim. My middle name is Robert and I went by Bob for a while).
BTW: nametag spelled backwards is Gate Man.
Above: Wild West theme since we were at Texas. Homage to 1970 peace sign. Exploring typography.
Below: Exploring typography. Larger than life. Computer punch cards used at registration.
A few Memories
The game of Killer, sitting in a circle figuring out who got yhe Killer card, 52 people, Kinsolving
Girl in the fountain? When asked if we advisors should get her out, one said, Shes not hurting anyone. A great lesson that has stuck with me.
The now-inappropriate query, May I see your bosom?
Bill putting fruit slices in his glasses, Sarah and I laughing so hard, we were called out by the Director, Richard Nicholas.
Pardon me boys, is this the pre-advisement center? (sung to the tune of Chattanooga Choo Choo)
• Levitation - faking the illusion of the freshman rising up, Jester:
What I most enjoyed and found most satisfying and rewarding was that we spent each session helping people. We helped them with any anxieties, loneliness, fear of the big campus, wanting to meet others. It was fun to talk with the students on our floor and learn about them - the next day we'd run to catch up with somebody and we would walk and talk. In our spare time, we would find someone in the living room that was sitting by themselves or looked concerned. We got people to play games and others to join in. We introduced students to other students. We had one of the best jobs because we helped people feel better about this next journey of their life. After Thursday morning, when we had a couple days off, we would just be exhausted. We'd laze around the dorm, swim at Barton Springs, see a movie, and just chill until meeting a new group on Sunday afternoon.
Spring: Wimberley retreat; Summer sessions:
1970, Jester Center: Jack Balagia, Tim Dickey, Cheryl Goodman, Karen Barton, Roy Spence, Bill Gurasich
1971, Kinsolving Dorm: Sarah Martin, Bill Arnold
The Carriage House
While standing out on the large patio during a Sigma Chi fraternity party, I was talking with the sister of a member who worked for a furniture store that offered interior design services. She mentioned that they needed someone to design a Direct Mail Piece for the store. Unfortunately, I had no idea what a Direct Mail Piece even was. We had yet to cover that in our advertising classes at UT. So, of course, I volunteered to design the piece. What the heck, I could go learn about direct mail the next day. And, I did.
The Zilker picnic
This was an ad in the student paper, The Daily Texan, on November 21, 1972. The name of the picnic was so wordy that I exploited that by rearranging those words within the copy. I did the illustrations in each of these pieces. This is about the time that I accepted I would not make much of a living as an illustrator.
The Red Tomato
A project for friends who bought an old warehouse and opened up a great Italian restaurant.
Don Weedon Texaco
For Radio/Televsion Advertising, I promoted inner tubes from Don Weedon Texaco (a station by campus and popular with students). I reasoned that it was an easy way for Weedon to make some extra bucks from the used inner tubes. I filmed an empty tube floating through some Hill Country rapids and closing with a shot of the station.
Avocado campaign
A class assignment in Advertising Campaigns. We worked in teams and while doing research, we discovered that the nutrition in an avocado could enhance learning, brain activity, and intelligence. We exploited that as the USP - the Unique Selling Proposition. Advertising solutions require the designer to find something that makes the product different in the minds of the consumer - something that will set it apart from the competition amid the clutter. Our team presented our comp boards while wearing mortarboard caps to support the creative strategy of the campaign.
An ad, from decades later, for Chipotle.
Texas State Arts & Crafts Fair
How do you illustrate arts & crafts? If one artistic medium (or even a few) is shown, the others might feel slighted. I decided to not show any but to exploit the name and the tagline 'The best of the fairs - the fare of the best.' This A&C fair was one of the largest in the state and was very selective on which artists could participate. The tagline emphasizes that. The cover highlights Kerrville's location in the Texas Hill Country.
Below: The outdoor board. The cover of the program.
Trade ad for kitchen equipment
B&W Recycling ad
Headline: How to improve the environment by not throwing this in here.
Body copy: It's simple. A can made of aluminum can be recycled and used as another aluminum product. Of course, throwing an aluminum can in the trash is better than throwing it on the ground. But simply keeping your aluminum cans and then taking them to a recycling center is even better. Then you're saving the environment from litter and you're not wasting aluminum. We can do without litter and we can do without waste. For more information on aluminum recycling, write Aluminum Company of America, 503-R, ALCOA Building, Pittsburgh PA 15219. Please help.
Tagline: Improve the environment at one of these recycling centers.
(Space for local paper to insert information on local recycling centers.)
Creative strategy: apparent contradiction to grab the mind of an eco-conscious person.
Date: January, 1979
I was already sensitive to type and layout - wrapping the text around the image. I suspect this was inspired by Herb Lubalin. He and his magazine, U&lc, were our design mentors while in college.
Seat belt campaign
This project entailed a tough sell - to get someone to change their addictive habits. Maybe we don't need them to change - maybe if we lose a few stupid people, that's okay. At least, that could be the pitch. This concept was a takeoff of the Survival of the Fittest evolution theory. The ergonomic figures represented crash test dummies and helped convey the technical and scientific aspect of the campaign and helped to lend it more credibility.
Above: Magazine ad. Below: Newspaper ad. Outdoor board.
Burger King ad campaign
I exploited visuals of their food and drink for this class assignment. We hand-rendered all marker illustrations and type. There was nothing remotely like a computer in college in 1970.
Toothpaste ad
The assignment was to create a black & white ad to sell toothpaste. We had to complete in class, in about 2 hours. All toothpastes are alike - some have added ingredients to provide some additional USP (unique selling proposition). Macleans was one of the first brands to add a whitener. The typeface, Cooper Black, adds to the 'ugliness' factor because of the clumsy letterforms in the word ugly. There is a bit more leading between 'Yellow teeth are' and 'ugly' to convey a slight pause - a hesitation before reading the uncomfortable revelation of ugly. The first 3 words form an arrow pointing down to Ugly. The concept was not to announce that Macleans had a whitener, but to touch an emotion about what happens without a whitener. It becomes more personal - referring to the user and not the product.
Identity and packaging for RedKen products
One of the best professors in design at the University of Texas in the late 1960s and early 1970s was Leonard Ruben, a former Art Director from an advertising agency in New York. I took an Independent Study class with him and proposed a major semester-long project to redo the identity and packaging for RedKen hair care products.
RedKen had no successful branding. Their products were sold in barber and beauty shops (that's what hair salons were called back then). They planned to move into retail. Even then, there was quite a variety of hair care products on the shelf, although nothing like there is now. The id and package needed to stand out, make a statement, and grab a potential customer. It needed to convey trust, professionalism, cleanliness, and good grooming. One observation I made during the research phase of the project was the inconvenience of having to rotate a cylinder to read the copy. Since the copy wrapped around the surface, one couldn't hold it and read it without having to turn the plastic bottle. I addressed this by printing the copy vertically up the bottle. One could then hold the bottle horizontally and read without turning. That type treatment would also provide the unique look. The bottle color was pure white to convey cleanliness and the names of the products conveyed the benefit to the user - Clean Hair, Soft Hair, etc.
I comped up several different bottles within the product line and presented them and the sketches for the semester grade. I didn't ever present it to RedKen because I spent too much time in fraternity activities and college life.
I hadn't seen other packages doing this in the early 1970s. The photos below show similar package design from 2011.
Television spot
Storyboard for animated television spot for Texas Monthly
Sweetheart Pageant
For the presentation ceremony of the UT Sweetheart finalists and coronation, spring 1970, I designed a set resembling a park/garden with a frame arch of abstract trees and a bridge to elevate the contestants in the lineup.
The use of paper for the drops and the visual style were influenced by the Spring Thaw sets from two years before at Hillcrest High School:
Yes, No and Yellow set design
This play was written by Tom White in 1973. The play revolves around a main character in a wheelchair who can communicate only through pressing buttons to operate an old stoplight - colors representing yes, no, and sorta maybe. His wife and her lover are able to manipulate him some because of his need to rely on them and the stoplight.
The play was presented at the Direct Theatre in New York City on March 5, 1976. Tom, his family, and some of his friends - Ed Baxter, myself, Toni White, and April Rapier - attended the premiere. This was one of Tom's first plays to be produced. A publisher bought the rights and needed a set design to include in the published script. Tom asked me to prepare a rendering and plan - he knew that I had come to the University of Texas majoring in set design.
Tom was a college roommate and fraternity brother. One of our favorite activities was spending the afternoon at Lake Travis, near Austin. Tom and I discussed the play and his vision for the set. While floating on an air raft on the lake, I started imagining the design - two walls, prominent ceiling beams, and very eclectic furnishings. Eclecticism, a balanced mixture of styles, worked with the characters who collected various pieces of furniture and accessories. A corner siting of the walls positioned the front entrance upstage and the necessarily prominent stoplight in the upstage corner where it looks over the entire room. Design: 1975, Austin, Texas
Above: Rendering. Below: Sketch and Floor plan.
TexPIRG
TexPIRG was a political action committee in Austin. The concept was to relate it to the state of Texas with nods to the flag and the panhandle on a state map, use the Texas flag and USA patriotic colors, yet have it work when reproduced in just black. It was all hand-rendered (I don't remember why and now it looks too sloppy and rough).
Cover mark for an English class production
A quickly-rendered somewhat-hokey pun on 'The Lion In Winter'.
Logo for pearl magazine
Pearl was the monthly magazine supplement to the student newspaper at the University of Texas in Austin in 1971. A contest was held to name the new magazine. My roommate, Tom White, won that contest. Very much a music fan, he submitted the name Pearl with rationale: it honors Austin native Janis Joplin, it suggests that pearl would be the 'jewel' of student publications, and that it would contain 'pearls of wisdom'. The new magazine now needed a flag and identity. I had been hired to be an ad sales rep for the new magazine (based on my experience as an intern with the Dallas Times Herald newspaper) and asked if I could design the identity.
While the name partly stood for Janis, I didn't want it to convey just her or music, and illustrating pearls of wisdom or jewels would be tough and maybe sorta cheesy. I concentrated on the letterforms and the word. I discovered the round counters in the p, e, and a; that a lower case e upside down is a lower case a; and that lower and upper case letterforms could be mixed without sacrificing legibility of the word. I aligned the free ends of the e and a to visually fill the gap. The letterform relationships create enough intrigue to pull the viewer in to decipher a bit. The curved letterforms were based on a round pearl and the tops of the letters resemble the silhouette outline of a pearl necklace.
The new identity was well received by the pearl staff. I even designed the cover for the first issue (hand-rendered comp left above). However, now it looks dated - very seventies - with the thick border and the curved corners. Above right is an ad from 1969 that shows the early 70s graphic style.
Protest poster of the UT Tower
The Administration Building at the University of Texas is a well-known icon for the university. The tower had long been considered a phallic symbol, standing tall, large, and erect over the flagship Texas university campus. During the turbulent, sometimes angry, late 1960s and early 1970s, I got the idea to render the tower with a fuck-you attitude. Making the connection to replace a middle finger with the tower was easy. The color was the UT school color - burnt orange, the way the tower looked at night when it was bathed in orange lights for football victories or commencement.
It was common practice for people to sell handmade items, crafts, albums, posters, buttons, and all sorts of stuff along the main drag across from campus. In fact, it was called, 'The Drag'. So I and a couple of fraternity brothers thought we could make a little money by printing these posters and selling them on The Drag, across from the Student Union. We called my high school art teacher, Margaret Hudson, and she guided us over the phone on how to prepare and reproduce the posters using silkscreen printing techniques. We bought a bunch of orange poster boards and set up shop in the fraternity house basement. We weren't very good at this type of printing so we were only able to make a few copies that were decent enough to sell. We took our meager stack to The Drag and set up our space with the poster clearly on display. We sold them all and the image sure got a lot of laughs and nods of appreciation. It was a fun experience for us college students.
'The Drag' - the union is across the street to the right, and the University Co-op is behind us on the left. We set out the stack of posters on the sidewalk up against the building on the left (these were different stores in 1970).
Inspirations and influences
The UT Tower
The closed fist protest
On the winner's stand at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, two black athletes raised their fists and looked down as a show of solidarity and protest of racial inequality. The raised fist was adopted by the war protest movement, the Women's Liberation movement, and other declarations of solidarity.
The Radiator Building painting
Georgia O'Keeffe painted this night view of the American Radiator Building in 1927, in the series of New York skyscrapers, that she painted between 1925 and 1930.
So much crap on a small sticker
• Deleted all the nonsense decorative adornment junk.
• Deleted the circular white border line.
• Tightened kerning in HOOK 'EM.
• Enlarged TEXAS and set it justified under the tower, to form a base.
• Decreased leading above and below the text.
• Enlarged the tower and text unit.
Much stronger message of the Tower and the Slogan.
Design at Sigma Chi: parade float, party facade, room, & graphics
Pledgeship: Fall 1969
Initiation: Spring 1970
House Manager: Spring 1970
Co-Pledge Trainer: Fall 1970
President: Spring/Summer/Fall 1971
Pledging & Rushing Commission: Evanston IL, March 1971; Salt Lake City, Fall 1971
Leadership Training Workshop: Dekalb IL, August 1971
Fraternity house decoration
At the University of Texas, I joined the Sigma Chi fraternity. One of the long-standing traditions at UT was to celebrate Round-Up. There were concerts, pageants, events, and a parade through downtown Austin. One of the traditions of Round-Up at Sigma Chi was to build an elaborate stage set facade of a western town on the back patio for the biggest party social event of the spring semester. We (well, primarily the pledge class) found old wood, built the structure, and painted it to look authentic. The main building in the facade was the Red Onion Saloon, named after a real saloon in Colorado. I named the bank the River City Bank - River City was the first name of the city of Austin. Spring 1972 or 73 (it was the early 1970s - who remembers?)
I drew this sketch during a chapter meeting and passed it around for approval. Below: designs for the saloon tower.
Round-Up
I designed a float for the parade. I used the Red Onion as the theme for the float. It was built on top of a trailer with room for the band and saloon guests, light poles extending out over the street, and a two-story back wall of the saloon with a balcony over the bar. Riding the float were dancing girls, bartenders, patrons, and the ragtime band from Shakey's Pizza (who helped sponsor the float). We rented period costumes for the riders. Spring 1972 (or 1973)
The model of the float. I even punched poms into the holes of the fabric along the back.
Building this model allowed me to work out dimensions, layout, and structural supports.
Driving across the Colorado River bridge. The parade in downtown Austin.
Remodeling my room
After a year serving as president of Sigma Chi, I moved out of the Officer's room in the main house and into room 5 of the apartment building. The rooms were an open studio. I wanted to build walls that would separate the bath and one closet from the sleeping/living area. This would allow one roommate to get ready in the morning (or afternoon as the case might be) with minimal disturbance of the other resident. I covered one wall in wood shingles and built cabinet door fronts for the built-in shelves. The effect helped the room look more like an apartment residence and less like a frat house dorm room.
Dates: Spring, summer, fall semesters, 1972
Some graphic projects
The Greek letter logo contains an arrow in the negative space between the letters.
Cover and program photos for Derby Day, a field day of events among campus sororities. I was already fascinated by aligning elements on a grid.
Some of my pledge class, Christmas Party, December 9, 1972
Front row: Wayne? (not in our class), John Lawrence, Jerry Landers, ?, Don Drinkard
Second row: David Mucha, James?, Larry Kingsbury, Watson, Philip Sumners, Cliff Logan
Back row: Jim Craver, John Jarvis
Newsletters for Highland Mall
Dobie mall
The mark is a stylized rendering of the mall layout with the new 'park' landscaping in the center.
Dobie Mall ads and maps
The ad on the left ran in the University of Texas student newspaper. Three of the malls refer to locations on campus and lists some activities one can do there. Dobie mall is a student-oriented small shopping mall across the street from campus - with a lot more things to do. Even if one doesn't read the copy, the visual of the longer column still makes the point that there's more to do at Dobie Mall. The ad in the middle was a back-to-school promotion. On the right was an ad touting the new McDonald's in the mall.
Below is a Christmas season ad and 3 sketches for proposed mall maps and directories. The maps were later rendered more precisely and installed in custom-built cabinets.
Full page ads in The Daily Texan: Monday, November 4, 1974; Tuesday, December 10, 1974
Dobie Mall map sketches.
A transformation ad for the dorm at Dobie. I let the illustration of the living room breathe more unencumbered, completed the missing parts of the floor plan, used a collegiate-looking font, and aligned the copy with the image.
Sketch in Aspen
Sketch of a block in downtown Aspen, Colorado in front of Aspen Mountain. A framed version.
Popular fonts in the early 1970s
In addition to Helvetica and Times Roman. Below left: Bolt. Right: Cooper Black. Bottom left: Souvenir. Right: Windsor
Zapotec catalog
Neil and Block, of Kilometer 26, traveled to Mexico, bought hand-made woven rugs, brought them to Texas, and sold them. I created a catalog that met these limitations: the colors of the specific patterns would change with each shipment, it had to be easy to add or delete pages, and it had to be produced quite inexpensively.
The concept was dictated by the handmade products selected for their unique quality; the text descriptions and the simple line drawings were hand rendered with no straightedge or drafting tools. Since every rug is a different color, a color photo might be misleading to the buyer. The paper was a natural cream color with a simple and inexpensive plastic binding along the top edge. This binding allowed the guys to add and delete pages as necessary. That is also why there are no page numbers. Design & production: 1974
Internship and first adult job
Part of the curriculum in the advertising program at the University of Texas was the opportunity to participate in a summer internship. It was encouraged but not required of advertising majors. I had worked with the Chairman of the Department of Advertising, Dr. Bill Mindak, and he had mentioned an opportunity to intern at the Dallas Times Herald newspaper. I interviewed with Mr. John Wolf, Director of Advertising at the paper. It turned out to be a valuable learning experience. I rotated through several different departments - Promotion, Art, Sales, and Production. I learned about the printing industry, typesetting, paste-up, and how to better prepare work for reproduction. After the initial few weeks of orientation rotations, I would cover the regular ad salesmen when they went on summer vacation. As I called on their accounts, I would often volunteer to redesign their logo or ad.
I won the State of Texas Outstanding Intern Award and Scholarship sponsored by the Houston Advertising Club and the Dallas Advertising League. Entry submissions were from all over the state. My boss, John Wolf, had nominated me for the award. I got a letter later that fall informing me that I had won the award and the monetary scholarship. The award ceremony was at the Westin Hotel at the Galleria in Houston. It was a fun day and a highlight of my college career. At that lunch and ceremony, an award was also given for outstanding intern in journalism. It was won by David Powell, also from the University of Texas and also from Hillcrest High School in Dallas. The two award winners for summer 1973 were both from the same university and the same high school. Our names and awards made statewide news.
2 UT Students From City Win Journalism Awards The Dallas Morning News, Febuary 20, 1974
Two University of Texas students from Dallas, David Powell and Bob Watson, won top awards this week in Houston at the 53rd annual meeting of the Texas Daily Newspaper Association.
Powell won the award as the outstanding editorial intern for work he did with the Houston Post last summer. He also served a year as editor of the student newspaper The Daily Texan.
Watson, representing The Dallas Times Herald, received tile Dallas Advertising League's award given to the outstanding advertising intern. His parents are Mr. and Mrs. JW Watson, 6831 Orchid. Both Powell' and Watson are graduates of Hillcrest High School.
Other winners included Tom Siegried of TCU, who took runner-up honors' in the editorial competition for work done at the Fort Worth Press. Don Carson, Texas Tech, representing the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal won second place for advertising. The awards were presented at a noon luncheon by Tom Meredith, publisher of The Lufkin News. Over 200 newspaper executives attended the 2-day convention.
Watson gets advertising group award Dallas Times Herald, Febuary 20, 1974
James Robert Watson of 6631 Orchid Lane has been presented the 1973 award as Outstanding Intern by Don Waddington, president of the Dallas Advertising League.
Watson, who interned in the Times Herald advertising department, was presented the award art the Texas Daily Newspaper Association Convention in Houston.
Watson is a past president of Sigma Chi and is a student at the university of Texas in Austin.
Interns are outstanding students employed in various departments to gain work experience while in school. He is the son of JW Watson.
As a result of the successful internship, I was offered a full time job in the advertising department at the Dallas Times Herald after I graduated. When I went back to school in the fall, the department chair made a big deal out of a UT student winning the state-wide award. After graduation, I eventually did return to the paper to work. I enjoyed the design portion but I was not a great salesman - never have been. But it was a great entry-level job and a good start to a professional career in design.
Dates: Internship: summer 1973. Award ceremony: Febuary 18, 1974. Parent's Day: March 9, 1974, Employment: fall 1975-76
Supervisors: DTH: Tom Farley or Farland, Casey Cohlmia, John Wolf. UT: Bill Mindak
Colleagues: Casca Schade, Debbie Klausner (another intern, foto above), Jean Prejean, Jim Wilson
The full name of the store was the Arnold & Morgan Music Company. Because that was so wordy, everyone just referred to it as Arnold & Morgan. They were so well known that that is all it took to signify the store. I explored how to include both names in one identity - I used an outline font and a solid font of the same typeface. The solid type carried the weight of the more familiar name while the outline font added the missing parts of the full name. I explored all the icons for music - a staff, notes, a guitar, etc. Most were cheesy and if I was to use some, I might have to use all - to fully convey their offerings. The treble clef serves as a generic music icon and I used it in place of the ampersand to provide a barb, a hook to grab the reader and provide a unique treatment of the letterforms. I also redesigned the format for their newspaper ads to help introduce a new look.
I had made my offer to the manager and promised to show him something the very next day so that, if he liked it, the new logo could run in their next ad, which had a fast approaching deadline. I did the mental assessment and some ideation while driving home and began sketching concepts as soon as I got home. Later in the evening I prepared a comp using rub-on letters, the normal way to comp type in the 1970s. I mounted the original art (Kinko's didn't yet exist nor did computers) on a board and presented it to them the next day. They loved it and used the new identity until they went out of business many years later (probably due to Best Buy or Walmart).
Arnold & Morgan had been a regular advertiser in the Dallas paper but their ads were typical electronic schlock - lots of stuff, no hierarchy or eye flow, and a chaotic arrangement of elements. The layout was typically all the merchandise taking up the bulk of the space and the store name and disorganized contact info and address along the bottom. I explored a new format: putting the major sale items at the top and aligning the lesser items in a row along the bottom of the ad. The logo was in the lower center with the contact info on either side. Flush columns, rules, and white space helped organize the info and provide order and hierarchy.
An ad for a furniture store scheduled to run in a special edition to celebrate the opening of DFW airport.
Duffey's Furniture
Yuck, the ad I was given to run in the paper was too tough to navigate - too many different typefaces, different formats of setting the type, and too cluttered with info. I reworked the ad with a guideline of 'flush left, ragged right' set text to provide order and organization. I set the important words, Sale and trundle beds, in all caps for easy scanning. I knew the power of the word Sale (like Free) and put the name of the store in the headline for better memorability - in case someone read only the headline. The border respects the flush left margin and relates to the border around the name (their logo). A great lesson and experience for me was the line above the logo that says "Be sure to see our . . ". That was added by the client at the last minute. I was blind-sided and didn't take the time (as little of it that there was) to educate him about consistency. I asked him what 'excitingly new' meant but got no acceptable answer - he just wanted it. This ad was for trundle beds, not the import and antique emporium. It was also set in italics, centered, and with the first letter of all words capitalized. What a great lesson on what can happen when the designer lets clients make design decisions. Clients think they know better than the designer. I was okay since I had succeeded in changing the layout of the copy and the ad composition. But those two centered lines of copy will always haunt me.
Help Wanted classified ad
While in the promotions department, the director asked if I would design an ad to insert in the paper whenever they had space to fill. This was a 'filler' - you can see these in almost any newspaper. Most ads that promote the newspaper are there to fill space where a client ad was scheduled to go but the client failed to get the ad copy to the paper in time to meet the printing deadline (deadlines are absolutely firm in the newspaper business). So, this ad was to promoted classified ads. It had to be designed so that it could be reduced and enlarged to fit into a variety of sized spaces. Since classified ads are very dull, dry, and boring (they rely entirely on content), the concept with this ad was to be attractive - to be the best looking ad in the sea of set type. This would help it stand out and improve the appearance of the page. The headline was set with swashes to provide flair, border around the copy helped contain the sections of text and provide unity as an island floating in the sea of black ink on the page. It was a hit. The promotions director adopted the ad and used it for several years.
New Employee Manual
As a new 'employee', I had a bit of a confusing time learning all the policies, traditions and organization of the Dallas Times Herald. I proposed to the Advertising Director that he allow me to create a new employee orientation manual. I interviewed people, conducted research, and gathered forms and maps. I designed a binder for the new material with pockets to hold the existing forms. It was a hit. They adopted the idea and general organization. The paper's own art and promotion departments produced the new orientation manual. It felt good to have made such an impact as an intern.
Ads and poster, Blithe Spirit
Zachary Scott Theater Center, Austin; 1972
Report cover for Michael Murphey
Tom White, my college roommate and fraternity brother worked for a music publisher while we lived in Austin. One of the musicians they represented was Michael Murphey. Tom was preparing a press packet of info and samples for Michael. He needed a cover for the letter-size packet.
I'm not real sure what the concept was - I just wanted a simple, easy to read layout that conveyed the information in a professional manner.
I selected a picture of Michael Murphey singing and cropped it tightly to add some drama and focal point to the page. I set the type flush left on a strong grid alignment - to provide a sense of order. The paper that served as the background was a light grey. I drew the rendering of his face on white paper and cut it out in a square format and glued that to the grey paper - that provided even more emphasis to the picture since that bit of white stood out on the grey page with black type. Design and production: sometime around 1974
Press kit for the band Point Blank
There was a period, between college and realizing I wanted to be a teacher, where I was a freelance, self-employed designer. One of my favorite memories is that during one week I was working on a set design for Yes, No, and Yellow, the product design for Backgammon in the Round, and a graphic design of a press kit for a band, Point Blank. I liked the diversity and that I was involved in three different disciplines of design at one time.
Point Blank was a rock band in Dallas, managed by the brother of a friend of mine, Gary Lee. Through Gary's connection, I was asked to prepare a press kit with a band overview, band member bios, contact info, etc. I had access to several photographs. They were standard promo pix so I cropped them tight to increase the impact. The concept was a circle, to represent the point blank, pure, basic, geometric, and familiar. I cut the photos into circles and wrapped text around in a circle. I had the pages printed on a gloss white stock to provide some weight and heft to the hard-driving image of the band. It was all in black & white, partly because the photos provided were b&w and partly because the contrast was so strong and bold. Right after everything was printed, Point Blank was signed to Arista Records. Gary told me that Arista would likely use its own art department and prepare a new press kit. A few days later, however, he called to tell me that Arista liked what I had done and they would adopt it. Design and production: about 1975
Doodles
One page of many from notebooks - I doodled during boring lectures. Sketch for an ad for a project about busy housewives.
Stadium message
Above left: A fraternity brother and I got into the Longhorn stadium before a game and flipped seats up or down to form this message. On the right, cropped out of the picture by the photographer, were the Greek symbols for Tri-Delt and Sigma Chi.
Earlier, in 1969, in the tallest wing of the unfinished Jester Center, a dormmate and I turned on room lights to spell UT. We lived next door in a mens dorm and had easily found a way into the construction site. We walked each floor, flipping light switches on or off (we took no photos of it - above is the building much later).
We had also found our way into the extensive utility tunnel system that connected almost all buildings on campus. We curtailed those late-night journeys when we spotted a creepy looking man standing at the end of one tunnel - he didn't say a word. He may have been just as creeped out by us, but we didn't stick around to discuss it.
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