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

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How to Fill a Warehouse with Story.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DAVE SOPP – Creative

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

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How to 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

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How to Know I'm the Right Person to Work With.

Weird for a marketing guy to say, but I’ve never been comfortable promoting myself or my work. Because to me, the most interesting part of what I do has always been identifying and solving the core challenges of my client partners. It’s kind of like how your favorite movie is your favorite movie because of the story and not because of who the executive producer was. So I’ll rip off the band-aid and tell you as quickly as I can why I’m uniquely qualified to work on your business. 

For starters, I have more than a decade of experience working at, for, and with, advertising agencies – from the impossibly huge conglomerates to the adorably tiny boutiques. (I was even a managing partner at an agency in San Francisco for a number of years). Then I quit agency life to start a business of my own. Designing all kinds of products, sourcing manufacturing overseas, expensive trade shows, private label manufacturing for department stores...the whole shebang. It became incredibly popular from the get-go, and stayed profitable for more than 20 years. (It still is, actually.) Through that business I wrote and illustrated a little book about parenting that became a perennial best seller, a globally recognized meme, and the first-born of a number of other publishing projects (There’s a new one launching October 2021). And while I was doing all of that, I began working directly with clients of all sizes, on projects ranging from event posters to multi-million dollar corporate rebrandings. I even served client side as a full-time CMO for two years. 

This is a really simple exercise I sometimes share in presentations. Which place would you go for fresh eggs? How about skydiving lessons? This, in a shell, is why my portfolio is so full of vastly different visual and verbal communication. I’m always working toward the perfect solution to every individual challenge.

Ok, I’m glad that part’s done. Because now I can get to my favorite part – how all of that history benefits you. I’ve got a lot of experience at being more than a creative. And the lessons of those broad experiences inform the solutions I bring to you. Look, a lot of people can generate fun, creative ideas. But it takes years of broader experience to be sure those ideas check all the boxes required for the best chance of success. Does the solution fit the budget? Does it make business sense? Is it embraceable by your employees? Is it sellable by your sales team? There are so many considerations, which is why I self-edit most solutions before they ever make it to a presentation.

While my process is the same for every project, it’s also wildly different for every project. That probably doesn’t make sense, but I can explain. Each project, client, business, and challenge is unique. I never, ever, ever, give anyone a #43. So here are the process tenants I apply to every project I work on:

Understand a client's business, professional aspirations, personality, and audience, as quickly and completely as possible

This is something I loved about working at/with/for ad agencies.You had to get smart about every business you worked on...FAST. From NFL teams to really complicated tech. It helps to be a quick study, but also a good listener who asks the right questions.

Boil down the challenge to a single, simple action item

You can’t find a solution until you succinctly identify the problem. While this is a lot of what I learned working in advertising, it took being a business owner myself to truly understand which questions identified the elements of a problem (or hidden solutions to it). Once we all agree on the actual challenge, only then can we work together to solve it.

Concept multiple disparate approaches to the specific challenge that can be executed within the project parameters

There are a thousand ways to skin a cat. And this is my favorite part of the process. You’ll get an array of vastly different, smart, creative, and affordable solutions to every challenge. And if you aren’t currently getting this treatment, you’re going to love this part as much as I do.

Execute quickly and efficiently

This is where the rubber hits the road. And it’s where my love of checklists reigns supreme. Good planning and being organized is the only way to avoid costly surprises so we can stay within your budget.

Capitalize gains. Adjust when necessary

Being a fellow business owner, I know (believe me) nothing is assured. You have to be flexible and always ready to capitalize on the best outcomes, but be completely prepared for the worst. That’s probably the most vital aspect of my being so uniquely qualified to help you. I see your business as my business.

DAVE SOPP – Creative

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

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HOW TO DESIGN A BOOK TO NEVER SIT ON A SHELF.

I’ve designed and illustrated a handful of books like the silly Safe Baby Handling Tips, Mysterio’s cute picture book, and more. But this was the first book I was asked to design that was, well, an actual BOOK. Like, a book you could spend more than 5 minutes reading. It had more than 1000 words in it, for crying out loud! What made it even more special was that it was penned by my talented writer wife and partner, Kelly Sopp. Which I’m thinking might be how I was lucky enough to get this very different assignment? Maybe.

Kelly’s book is titled Hey, I Love You…and it’s beautiful, simple, and remarkably (you’ll appreciate the pun in a minute) unique. It was written to give couples practical marriage wisdom, along with an effortless way to exchange heartfelt words that need to be said, or unsaid, or aren’t said often enough. It’s different from any book in the Relationship and Marriage section of your last remaining bookstore for a lot of reasons. But the most brilliant reason is the way you use it. Any book can tell you what to say, how to act, or what 25 rules to follow to reach happily ever after. But Kelly’s book has a simple, built in system that, when applied, will literally keep dust from collecting on the book AND your marriage.

The final cover of Hey, I Love You…: Bookmark your way to a Remarkable Marriage by Kelly Sopp. We did over 30 covers for this, can you believe it? And they were all this simple and they were all in white, black, and this charming yellow. That byline on the front on white? That’s a removable sticker. The book is meant to be personal and we didn’t want people looking at marketing stuff every time they wanted to use it.

SO MANY WORDS! It was actually fun managing the typography. I hadn’t dealt with having control over this much copy for a while and it was so fun. Of course there more to this than this one spread, silly. Oh, and tabs. I was able to include finger tabs for each of the 5 chapters so you could find what you wanted to “say” really fast.

It’s so REMARKABLY easy (paying off on that earlier pun now): the bulk of the book is composed of bookmarkable sentiments that you can use to offer words of romance or encouragement to your spouse. Just find the feeling you want to share, pop in the supplied bookmark, and hide the book in a fun place for your partner to find. Under their pillow. On top of the coffee maker. In the fridge. Get creative! Every page is a love note to be left to deliver a soft, unexpected reminder to your spouse that you’re there and thinking of them.

But the book is especially helpful to any and every marriage because it accounts for reality. Everything’s not all romance, all the time. There’s a section for when you have disagreements and tough times. There’s even an array of thoughtful ways for you (or your spouse) to sincerely apologize for any discretion. In these cases, it’s less about starting a makeout session. It’s more concerned with getting you two discussing what might be out of whack in a kind, constructive way so you can get back to the makeout sessions.

Most of the book is like this. And this is how it works: “Oh, something is bookmarked for me!” (top right). “Awwwww!” (left) “AWWWW! (bottom right) Do I really need to tell you what happens next?

This isn’t just a book to instigate cuddles. It’s got everything you’ll need during your decades together. Seriously. It can even help you tackle some pretty serious stuff. My article on doing the book illustration goes more into the challenges that posed to the tone of the book.

I’m not trying to sell you the book. If you’ve read any of my articles on strategy, design, marketing, and illustration, they all dive into this much background detail. Because no work can be evaluated by the work alone. That’s literally why they say, “You can’t judge a book by it’s cover.”! Because the cover may not reflect the spirit of the writing. I had a brilliant creative director tell me once that the fastest way to kill a bad product is with good marketing. It’s so true.

So when I got Kelly’s final manuscript, here were my take-aways:
Upbeat. WAY out of character in the genre (in a good way). Funny where appropriate and keenly adept at bringing a sensitive positivity and kind understanding to the serious bits. It reads like lavender scented, soft wool dryer balls. Romantic if you’re in that mood, comforting if you aren’t.

The book’s content was a complicated thing (the topic of marriage) broken down into its simplest form and delivered with a kind smile. So that was my direction. Get out of the way of the words and just deliver them, gently. The font is Abrade. It’s got, like, 1M variants and its Light version fits the tone of Kelly’s writing like a wedding ring.

All this is from the initial pitch to our publisher (Running Press). Pretty similar to what was published, no? Hahaha. It’s because we presented such a detailed, thought out vision of what this book could be. But there were some changes. (Clockwise) At first we thought it’d be really nice if the hardcover was cloth covered (instead of a book jacket). But that turned out to be too expensive (and in the end it was fine ‘cause it’d probably get really dirty with use. This is a photo of the book I ‘shopped up for the pitch. The books visual language was thought out at the beginning, too. We even included a series of patterns to use and that was just for the endpapers. The HEY logo as so important that I did a ton of versions before landing on what we chose, here on that bookmark. And finally a ‘shopped image of the book where one might find a spicy sentiment waiting for them!

Alternate covers! So many covers. I mentioned we looked at over 30 subtle and not so subtle variations, but that didn’t even include versions of what shape the cover sticker was or what would be on the bookmark or what if the cover was cloth with an acetate jacket!? I don’t know if this is how much thinking goes into every published book, but it’s what goes into the ones I design.

This is where to keep this book. Everywhere. The best design aspect is the concept itself. That the couple who owns the book uses it as a fun communication device, passing it back and forth as desired or needed.

I mentioned at the beginning that this was more of a “book-like” book than I’d ever designed in the past. It’s true, but it’s “more-than-a-normal-book” because of the interactivity baked into the concept. So even the writing of it was part of it’s design and I collaborated with my author from the outset. We divided the content into bite-size, intentional bits. We made it easy to digest. And the final layout is a natural extension of that.

The bookmarkable spreads are visually sparse to give the sentiments the attention they deserve. The lead message is positioned large as a sort of headline at the top left with an accent illustration above for colorful, emotional seasoning. At the lower right are brief, carefully chosen words of support, positioned to not be blocked by the supplied bookmark. Easy squeezy, light and breezy.

One of my favorite quotes is one that I cannot for the life of me remember so I’m going to go with something similar that I found on the interwebs - ”The definition of being good is being able to make it look easy” That was from one of the great thinkers of our time, Hugh Jackman. I happily did over 30 cover designs for this thing to be sure I got it right. Yeah, the cover is important, but 30!? Published authors, did you get 30 versions to consider? I also did 250 more illustrations than was called for (or paid for in the advance). I explain in my article about the illustrations that it wasn’t because I had to because I was married to the author. It’s just the book needed it. Which didn’t make it the easiest project I’ve ever tackled but it was just as rewarding in the end. Because I LOVE going the extra mile(s) for something (and someone) I deeply believe in.

DAVE SOPP – Creative

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

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HOW TO 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

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How to Go Big in Iceland.

I’d never done a mural before. After my successful project teaching Icelanders how to ride a bus safely and not-insanely, I was asked to do four (FOUR!) giant murals inside Strætó’s Reykjavík headquarters. I was ecstatic and terrified, but mostly curious. Their ad agency handled the public reception room and it was nice. Typical Reykjavík skyline in modern thin lines, and stuff like that. The four murals they wanted would be in places only employees can see – the marketing/PR office, the tire shop, the dispatch office, and a very long wall in the company cafeteria. There wasn’t a creative direction other than, “what would you do?”

This is the cafeteria and, in a nutshell, the whole process of the project. My client sent me multiple photos of each wall, which I turned into panoramas (top). Then I turned those into a digital canvas and used those to make measurement guides. This wall was fairly easy with only those few vents. Wait until you see the dispatch room and tire center. I drew everything in pieces in Procreate, then put them all together in Illustrator. Then I popped the whole thing into my panoramas for client approval (bottom).

I started by doing what I always do for any project – consider the challenge I’ve been asked to solve and the what the intended audience would appreciate, then offer a range of solutions. It was seemingly simple. De-dullify some big, blank walls and lighten up the everyday lives of employees. If it was one wall, no prob. But this was four interior walls that employees would encounter multiple times a day. It really felt like it needed a theme to tie them all together. 

My wife asked me why I was stressing so much over a wall decorating project. But to me it was so much more. It was a chance to celebrate the people who worked hard at a public service job that is typically unappreciated by its benefactors. The real challenge was helping those employees feel proud of what they do, and reminding them they matter greatly to their community. I believe every marketing or creative opportunity is a chance to do so much more than asked.

From the outset I had a direction I knew I wanted to go in. Bring the bus into the only place it doesn’t go in Iceland – INSIDE THE HQ.

I started with a litmus test to plumb the tone of the project. Serious? Funny? Fantastical? After all, there were no rules. But being 3,000 miles away from Iceland, I had no way of walking around to check the atmosphere of each department. My clients were my guide, and in the end, they went with what I hoped they’d choose. As I set out to bring the bus into the HQ, I thought, why not bring along the passengers, too?

This is what I presented in the first round - four different themes. I wasn’t sure what level of whimsy they wanted to bring in so I kept the spread pretty broad. 1. This was the one they’d eventually pick to bring the buses and their riders into the building. 2. This was based on something that my client had told me when I was working up the Riding Tips. He said people leave some crazy shit on the bus. So that’s what I had represented for the cafeteria. All the stuff left on buses. Yes, even a prosthetic arm! 3. I don’t even know where this came from. I’m glad they didn’t choose this because it looks like a pediatricians waiting room. 4. This was my second favorite theme - buses running the bus company! Every wall would represent the work going on there, only by buses! Hilarious.

The idea would feature Icelanders interacting with one another while riding and eagerly waiting for the bus. It was a great way to show a slice of Icelandic life, just doing the things that Icelanders do when they use Strætó. Early conversations about the Safe Bus Riding Tips revealed that people often do bizarre things on the bus. I thought there was a fun opportunity to make the murals a sort of “Where’s Waldo” of truths and funny inside jokes for the employees. It would also be a great way to create a story that could connect the murals in each department, converging in an “in bus” experience where all the employees come together - the cafeteria.

Final - Marketing/PR Office (top) My client told me that there are these really aggressive geese that are all over the place bullying people for handouts. They even get on the buses sometimes! So of course we had to add that in. As well as other feathered sights you’d see at a bus stop. That blank spot on the bus? That’s where a whiteboard is glued to the wall. I had to work around a ton of stuff in the dispatch office.

Final - Dispatch Room (top) Oh, man. So many windows! And a giant beam that divided the wall right in the middle. But we cleverly designed worked around it all by incorporating it into the drawing.

Final - Tire Center (top) The tall skinny gray boxes are support beams we had to work around. The other two boxes? This is the best - they’re bathroom doors!!! The men’s room is on the right, where the dudes are hanging out and the women’s restroom is at the front of the bus. Hilarious.

Final - Cafeteria (top) This is my favorite wall. I mentioned hiding little bus-life details before. One of those is a nod to weird giant things people try and bring on the bus. And I love the guys going to a soccer game in the front. See those two lost in their books? Notice how similar they look? The girl’s book is titled, “How to Find Your Perfect Match”.

Afterwards I noticed that all murals are signed and I didn’t sign any of these! But in the cafeteria mural, if you look hard enough, you can spot me gazing out the window at the beautiful Icelandic countryside. I can’t wait to go and see these in person!

While the walls were super long, the actual office spaces were pretty tight. Anything colorful or too aggressive would have been way to jarring to live with every day. So we decided to go with line art in a medium gray that would fill the space, but not fry the mind. From a production standpoint it was…interesting. I’ve written about how detail crazy I am, especially about physical space. But since I couldn’t measure it myself, my client photographed each wall the best he could, and I made a measurement guide from those photos. They accounted for every vent, pipe, beam, window, and any other possible obstruction. It’s was pretty damned detailed. He kindly confirmed the measurements in my detailed guide without cursing me (as far as I know). Then I drew the elements of the murals (piece by piece) and assembled them onto templates I made from the measurements. After that, I made Photoshop mock-ups to scale of how each mural would look after installation. Oh, and no one had to paint all this! They went with printed wall wraps. Smart.

In the end it was WAY more illustrating than I had originally planned on. What will all the passengers and all, but it was so much fun. Each figure was independent of everything else in the mural, so we could move any passenger wherever we liked in order to get the best composition. I’m told the reception by employees was really, really positive. I can’t wait to hop on a Strætó bus to HQ one day, and have a look for myself.

DAVE SOPP – Creative

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

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How to Not Hire an Ad Agency.

I’ve worked at big and small ad agencies as a full time art director, as a freelance mercenary hired to win new business, and I’ve been a partner at an ad agency. You know what all that agency experience taught me? That you probably don’t need an agency at all. I’m not saying agencies are irrelevant today. If you’re McDonalds, you totally need an agency. But if you aren’t, you don’t. In fact, not only do you not need an agency, you actually only need one person to handle all your marketing needs. I know this because I’ve been that person for the last 18 years.

So what kind of business can use just one person to manage anything and everything from advertising to complete rebranding? To name a few: a baby clothing company, a tech startup, a multi-million dollar communications company, and even a Southern town. And a lot of these projects overlapped. How do I do it? By being Peter Graves.

Peter Graves, Mission: Impossible, Season 3, Episode 1: “The Heir Apparent”, Original airdate: September 29, 1968

Ok, I didn’t want to be Tom Cruise so I went with the original star of the Mission: Impossible TV series. Besides, Peter Graves is way cooler. Anyway, you probably see where I’m going with this, but a lot of people remember this show wrong. They remember that the lead guy gets the mission, he picks a team and then they go make it happen. That’s not right. He actually only gets a PROBLEM. They never show him doing the most important part - figuring out how to solve the problem before he picks his team (that would be boring, I guess). If you remember, they DO show him explaining his strategy to that hand-picked team, telling them each what they need to do to pull it off. And that’s why you don’t need a whole agency. Because you most likely don’t NEED THE WHOLE AGENCY. You only need the people who will best kill, kidnap, seduce, or overthrow your problem. (Sorry, I felt I had to circle back to the analogy.)

People always ask me what my process is and I tell them that every client and every project is different. And now you know why. I have a lot of experience doing a lot of things. So, naturally, I end up doing a lot of the heavy creative lifting by my lonesome (strategy, design, illustration, advertising, etc.) and this is helpful in a few ways. Like, I’ll be designing the strategy to fit a budget. And I like to save as much of the budget as possible for media placement rather than production (after all, we need people to actually see it, right?). So if I can do the work and I know what needs to be done, it’s the fastest route to running. But sometimes the project doesn’t need my flavor. Or we need an illustration style I can’t match. Or maybe I don’t know how to do something. Look, I talk about things I can do (and enjoy) a lot, but there’s a bunch of stuff that I admit I need major help with. Like placing digital media (I find it unnecessarily hard and painful). Or using a camera (I’m the world’s worst photographer). Or making amazing After Effects animations (I’m learning this one currently). But for skills like this I call on a stable of seasoned, talented AF professionals that I know, love, and trust implicitly. And, unlike an agency that does this all the time, I don’t mark up the cost of these folks (whether my clients pay them directly for services or not). Here’s a promise I’ll make to you because you’ve read this far: If you don’t need me, but need a photographer or any other type of creative professional, I’ll be thrilled to recommend one of my team and get you connected. My door is always open to helping people solve creative problems right.

Finally, let’s get to how to not hire an agency in favor of hiring someone like me. For me, there is no budget too small or dream too big. Sounds corny, but I mean it. I get untold joy from helping people realize their goals and dreams. It’s my thing. If I can solve your problem in a week, then that’s what I’ll do. A week-long project and I’m done. If you need a complete rebranding and sustained brand maintenance, we can work out a retainer to keep our relationship going. My structure doesn’t involve me making up projects or creating busy work to keep you paying me. You only buy what you need and that works fine for me. Here’s an example of how it works: 

Tech Startup

Work: Act as CMO to lead a small team in developing brand materials, advertising, trade show booth and appearances, press releases, and manage advertising plan.

Steady Team: Me, web tech support, and eventually a digital marketing team.

Special Project Team: Gaming app designer, focus group consultant, After Effects editor and Foley artist, Instagram influencer, voice talent, and believe it or not, a bus mechanic.

Cable company

Work: Total rebranding/renaming from business cards to fleet graphics to entirely new website with monthly creative support for advertising, monthly strategy, TV production, on-hold phone messaging, and daily social media posts.

Steady Team: Me, a copywriter, web tech support, digital marketing person

Special Project Team: After Effects editor, a recording studio engineer, a photographer

Southern town

Work: Total positioning strategy and branding, custom retention/loyalty program, branded merchandise design, monthly advertising and brand support.

Steady Team: Me, a copywriter, web tech support, digital marketing person

Special Project Team: Website designer, film director and two actors, a photographer

See? A focused approach like this is both efficient and effective. If you’re a giant international conglomerate, or a CMO that’s rolling in dough and who wants to be fawned over and taken to lunch all the time, get that agency. They love doing that shit and then billing you for it. But if you want to be a part of the process, do some amazing work, and save some of your money to actually run the work, give me a call. Because when you’re with me, Mission: Impossible is actually Agency: Unnecessary.

DAVE SOPP – Creative

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

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How To Be First.

We’d been making funny onesies at Wrybaby since we created the category in 2000. When things blew up during the first year, they blew up big. Our designs were featured in the NY Times, Newsweek, People, USA Today, Time, and TV Guide, to name a few pubs. They were even seen on VH1, Today Show, and Live with Regis and Kelly. It’s still unconfirmed, but witnesses swear to seeing David Letterman hold up the funny onesie we sent him on his Late Night comedy show. That kind of exposure is great, but it also creates a giant, burning-man-style beacon that screams, THESE PEOPLE ARE ON TO SOMETHING.

Meet Valencia. She’s rocking the world’s first Super Snapsuit.

If you’re a designer or an entrepreneur, you need to hear the very first thing our very first screen printer told us before things got crazy –“People will rip you off. Stay ahead of them.” He wasn’t lyin’. It wasn’t long before we were inundated with competitors, knock-offs, rip-offs, or all three at once. While Von Maur, Buy Buy Baby, and FAO Schwartz were ordering our funny onesies from the source (us!), Target and Sears were ripping us off wholesale. While our company was doing private label projects with Barneys and Cost Plus World Market, thousands of small businesses were stealing our designs right and left. Café Press was full of people hawking wrybaby designs. When the company started, there was just one little place in the south that offered blank onesies to print on. Eventually we started having garments custom made overseas (way better cotton and fit), and while we did that, garment supply companies started carrying lots of blank onesies domestically. It got really easy for people to do what we were doing, so we decided to go back to making baby things that were hard to make.

Our concepts and designs up top, and below is how Target ripped us off. I appreciate that they doubled the cost of a “Photo with Baby” while undercutting the cost of our original onesie by 75%.

We made fun bath towel sets (that’s what we ended up doing with World Market), we made travel cases for pacifiers, and we made stacking blocks for toddlers among many, many other things. We even made pillowcase covers for new parents! All of these did fine, but nothing ever matched the baby-shower-gift perfectness of the funny onesie. It’s a magical combination of being a product for a very focused age range, that’s useful, provides good theater at a baby shower, and is really affordable. So how would we keep making funny onesies that could be recognized as OUR funny onesies?

In 2007 no one was as bananas for super heroes as they are today. Seriously. Just like there were NO funny onesies in 2000 before wrybaby made them. There were only a couple of people making super hero capes for 8 year-olds, which you’d think would be amazing business. It wasn’t. The problem was this – no one wanted to kill a kid with a cape they made, and no one wanted their kid to die in one. It’s pretty understandable from a parent’s perspective. And, yeah, it’s freaking scary making kids clothes much less SUPER kids clothes. We figured these added up to a pretty HUGE barrier to entry that we could rub our brains on and solve.

OK, nevermind for a sec that they were hard to make. If no one were ape shit for comic book heroes, why would anyone want to buy a super hero onesie? The short answer is because it’s ridiculously hilarious. Look, you’ve got this non-communicative blob who doesn’t even have enough strength to hold its own head up, much less fight a giant menace from planet Krapnoid. Can you imagine strolling a super-infant into a Starbucks? Knee. Slapping. Hilarious. You could even have fun over a bottle of wine with your spouse imagining your child’s future super-powers. There were all kinds of reasons to take on the how-do-we-not-kill-the-child-problem. The answer was surprisingly simple and available all along. It was just hard to make. Take a standard, lap-shoulder baby t-shirt and sew a cape into the shoulder seams. The neck would be SUPER loose. And a baby 0-12 months isn’t THAT squiggly, so as long as you made the cape short enough to not get sat on, you’d be good. As an extra safety precaution we tacked the cape down to the back of the bodysuit in three places, which kept it nice and close. Then, to make it even harder to replicate, we used this cool puffy ink to print on the front. 

The idea for a Super Onesie actually came from the baby journal we wrote for Running Press, The New Parent’s Fun Book (left). You can see where we incorporated the cape into the shoulder seams. And although a baby’s going to do nothing but lay on it, we even did the extra credit of embroidering a star on the cape!

How fun is that puffy ink!? I made it so only some parts were puffy. Like on Super Cute, only the type outline and starts were puffy so the design didn’t get to heavy. Who wants a sweaty baby?

Aside from the darn thing being SUPER safe to wear, there were so many other minut details that we poured over to make this garment from scratch. From fit to color to a cape that wouldn’t end up a wrinkled mess. What a pain!

NPH!!!!!!! I couldn’t believe I was lucky enough to have even the smallest guest appearance in his awesome life. The Super Snapsuits were SUPER well received (sorry, I’ll stop doing that now). For a while they were, at least.

The packaging was on point and the pitch was perfect. When all was said and done we had a SUPER safe, SUPER fun new baby shower gift to offer our boutiques. We eventually added a new Super Snapsuit to the mix – “Super Bad” for kids that may desire a different path to worldwide notoriety. Our invention made it to People.com, but our pride and joy was when Neil Patrick Harris showed pics of his twins wearing them while he was co-hosting Live with Regis and Kelly. Another point of pride was when Ohio State University asked us to donate Super Snapsuits to help reward families who were participating in a study to battle SMA (Spinal Muscular Atrophy). No one bothered trying to copy our Super Snapuits. And most importantly, no one got hurt. Total win. At least until the super hero craze started. Which you’d think would HELP our sales, but it did not. The opposite happened! Consumers wanted licensed product, no matter how shitty that product was constructed. And, man, they were terrible. They didn’t even have capes, for crying out loud! But that’s people. Sigh. Eventually our Super Snapsuits were attacked online nationally as an affront to women somehow. So when we sold out of our last batch, we retired the style for the time being.

We did so well with those first two styles, we decided to add a villain to the mix. Initially these came locked away in little window box packaging, which in hindsight was kind of dumb because you couldn’t see the cape right away.

We also made everything so bigger kids could be super, too.

That sounds like a sad ending, but it’s totally not! This story is titled “HOW TO BE FIRST”, after all! Hahaha. While the Super Snapsuits were on the market, we were still innovating. A onesie with just a QR code on the front, for example. When the curious scanned it, it would bring up a fake online shopping website saying that that baby had been added to their cart. We invented a baby mystic who offered blind-boxed fortune telling baby t-shirts (you wouldn’t know which incredible future you’d get!). We’re still innovating. You can get free, shareable goodies every month, or you can print our styles on your own with services like Zazzle. This is how, for more than 20 years, wrybaby has stayed profitable. By being first.

DAVE SOPP – Creative

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

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How to Get Good Creative.

Ok, this one is for the entrepreneurs and the CMO’s. I’m a big fan of the saying, “There’s more than one way to skin a cat.” Not because I’m not fond of cats, or because I think it’s such a bizarre adage to make in our modern, enlightened times. No, it’s because any problem can have a myriad of solutions. And what I like best about doing what I do is, well, no one really knows what idea is gonna work! Seriously. Not my client, not their spouse (everything ALWAYS gets cleared by a spouse), not even me. Even with all the data available today, people are STILL making EDUCATED GUESSES at solutions. Guesses based on past experience, and whatever information is available to push them in what is possibly the right direction. And no matter how big someone crushed it in the past, their experience and success doesn’t mean they’re somehow a marketing god. For example, J. C. Penny was desperate to save themselves from oblivion so they hired the hottest retail talent on the market – the guy credited with the Apple Store’s success. They did everything he said to do, and his grand plan was a colossal failure. Bad educated guess. As I write this, J.C. Penny is filing for bankruptcy.

So if you’re honest and admit you don’t know what to do to solve your creative problem, and you hire a creative to use their experience to analyze your story, market data, and target info in order to make an educated guess, then you have to ask yourself, “What are the odds that what we do will work?” Well, I have a secret way of increasing those odds of success, and I’m going to share it with you. You’re going to kick yourself when you read it. It’s something most creatives don’t do anymore. It’s the key to everything. Ready? Guess a lot of different educated guesses.

I’m not talking about thinking up a thousand random solutions and then asking your client to pick one. By the way, if anyone ever does this to you, get outta there! Because they don’t care about your business as much as they’re in love with their own creativity. Believe it or not, creatives don’t have to think very hard to conjure up a bunch of crazy shit. But chances are good this won’t happen to you because the only thing lazier a creative can do is to present you with just one solution. Or worse yet, three solutions that are all kinda the same somehow.

Here’s what you want to have happen, ‘kay? You want to see three solutions. That’s a good number. More than that and you’ll get overwhelmed and start forgetting the first two ideas, and that meeting’s going to be really fucking long. Why long? Because those three ideas should be VASTLY different from each other while solving the same problem. Your hired creative needs to explain exactly why each different idea’s unique angle solves your problem based on their experience, your business data, your competition, your target, and the creative problem itself. My writer-partner, Andrew Tonkin, called it, “Rubbing your brain all over it.”  He and I treat creative problems as if they were our problems. And that’s how you get to educated guesses that respect your business and your challenge.

I’ll give you an example. Mr. Tonkin and I were once asked by a small San Francisco agency (Binocular and “Hi Michael!”) to help pitch Spaten West, Inc. At the time, the US was experiencing its first microbrew boom. Red Hook. Sam Adams. Anchor Steam. Sierra Nevada. All new names that were siphoning sales away from the big brands. Spaten wanted in on this “good beer isn’t Budweiser thing”. But, as you may know, Spaten is the exact polar opposite of those sexy newcomers. It’s a German import that is very respected but not as well known among the great unwashed as, say, Heineken. Spaten as a brand is, well, not very “fun” (hell, one of their offerings has a monk on the label). Interestingly, Spaten is 600 years old and, truth be told, their brand felt like it. So how do you make the oldest beer ever, compete (on a limited budget) for the attention of young, college-educated beer aficionados who are going ape for new microbrews launching every week? That was the problem, and here are the three varied guesses we presented.

1. Still Fresh After 600 Years.

Yeah, Spaten isn’t the newest beer, but look how sassy and self-effacing they are about it! We’d use our (see? With us, your brand/problem is our brand/problem) biggest disadvantage to our benefit. Not pictured (for obvious reasons) was the radio that Mr. Tonkin wrote for this campaign. It was a rebroadcast of an “actual” Spaten radio spot from 1458 where Klaus, a tired serf, takes a break to extoll the virtues of Spaten. Best line – “So when the sun sets at the edge of the world, I walk fifty furlongs into my nearest township, go to the inn and order up a frosty wooden mug of Spaten!”

1. Still Fresh After 600 Years - Old German woodcuts surrounding pithy, funny lines about how unapologetically old and authentic Spaten is. These were to be ads in SFWeekly, the Guardian and the like.

Spaten didn’t have a lot of money. Our executions wouldn’t cost a lot to make, we wanted to put all the money into putting it all out in the world. So what work they could afford to place had to work REALLY HARD. On the left is a bus shelter poster, upper right a fun coaster idea, and finally my favorite piece of the whole thing, the table tent that would be on every bar and table in the Bay Area.

2. Some Things You Just Can’t Translate.

Microbrews were making their own domestic versions of classic German beer varieties, so why buy an imported German beer? Well, Spaten makes a beer so delicious, it can’t be “translated” into an identical American copy. Not only can you not translate Spaten as a beer, you can’t even translate the words to describe it. The radio for this was funny for a couple of reasons. First, true to the “translate” theme, it was designed as an audio language learning course – How to Speak Spaten. Half the spot was in German and the gentlemen were were presenting to spoke German. But poor Mr. Tonkin had only a rough grasp of the language and we made him read the script aloud. At the end of his read, we all looked at each other in silence for what must have been a full minute before Andrew asked, “Did that make sense?”. The Spaten guys were again quiet before one of them ventured the German-accented question, “Was there something about a monkey?”

3. Spaten. The Real Germany.

Mention Germany to an American and they’ll conjure up the Rhine, Lederhosen, Oktoberfest, and pretzels (I know, I’m leaving WWII out but whatever). All these emotional cues are in Spaten’s 600-year-old wheelhouse, but they’re not the mindset you want to conjure up at your favorite sexy bar. So we’d contrast this aged, respected beer with the surprisingly young, hip, energetic, REAL Germany.

2. Some Things You Just Can’t Translate - Well, this is just silly. And admittedly sexually suggestive. But still a fun, viable way to get people’s attention and to make a connection. These were bus shelters, and you can be sure the bar coasters and table tents followed suit. We also had Spaten restroom signs in this campaign that’d we’d give to bars (Damen and Herren).

3. Spaten. The Real Germany. - The third direction brought some sexy sophistication to the party, along with some education regarding what the REAL Germany was all about. The script caption would call out the people, the bar or the city the photo captured.

May favorite part of this campaign was, again, the drink coaster (bottom right) that was shaped like Spaten’s shield logo.

See? Three super-different, fun ideas that could, in their own ways, logically help make a 600 year old German beer relevant to Americans who are crazy for better beer. So here would be your options at the end of the presentation: 

A. Fall in love with one concept and we start making materials.

B. Really like two of the ideas and ask for revisions (maybe one was too spicy, and one was visually too busy or something). Whatever you do, don’t ask to have multiple ideas melded into one campaign. That never, ever, never, ever works. 

C. Don’t like any of them, tell us how we missed the mark (or you remembered a detail or direction we never discussed) and we start all over.

Whatever the outcome, you’ll get to see your problem solved in surprising ways and you’ll have the reasoning to support any decision you make. So what did Spaten West, Inc. pick? None! Hahaha. They ended up going with the worst option, D – changing their mind and deciding not do anything at all. They truly didn’t have a lot of money, and if I remember right, it came down to that. But no matter! I got to use that good work to show you the kind of thinking you deserve to get when you hire a creative to solve a creative problem. And I didn’t even have to peel skin from an actual cat in the process! 

DAVE SOPP – Creative

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

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How to Survive Being Hated Internationally.

Yes. It happened to me. I made international news. They talked about it on the Today Show. National radio talk shows hounded me for interviews. A woman wrote me (actually a lot of women wrote, but this stood out) that she hoped I’d have my arms and legs ripped off. What caused such a firestorm? A funny onesie. I’d never gotten bad press before, much less ferociously attacked. Hilariously, it had always been way the opposite. At the time, no one really knew what to do when something as extreme as this happened to them. There was no guidebook. As far as I know, there still isn’t. So I’m going to walk you through what we did when the world decided to hate us. If it ever happens to you, at least you’ll have some idea of what you can do.

Welp, this is it. This is the funny onesie that brought an international troll army to our door.

Let’s back up for a sec. In 2000, a small company called Wrybaby started the funny onesie category. Seriously, back then, the novelty onesie DIDN’T EXIST. I can say this with confidence, because my wife and I started Wrybaby when our son was born. Kelly and I agreed that, through humor, we’d reflect the new parent experience in a way that was 100% true, and 100% funny instead of kind of terrifying. What we made was irreverent, but not vile. It was unconventional, but served our mission. We made hipster baby gifts before our community labeled them as such.

We started with a few designs and suddenly, in 2001, it all went crazy. Wrybaby products were featured in Time Magazine, Newsweek, USA Today…it was bananas. And it stayed bananas for years. Hell, Neil Patrick Harris and his husband introduced their new twins to the world in People Magazine wearing our onesies. Then he showed his babies wearing our super hero onesies on Live with Regis and Kelly. NPH likes us (and we love him right back)! Hahaha.

So’s you have an idea of the kind of stuff wrybaby makes, here are some of 2015’s best-selling funny onesies. Heck, a few are STILL best-sellers. We also had some adorable plush and kid’s backpacks in addition to the world’s first Super Hero onesies.

Not to brag, but this is just a tiny sampling of the kind of press we were used to getting over the last 15 years. People who found our stuff, liked our stuff. It was that simple. That InStyle Magazine page? That’s our Wheel of Responsibility in Christina Aguilera’s kitchen. I can’t even remember how we found out about that.

In 2013, we introduced a new baby bodysuit with a graphic that said “Love Me for My Legrolls”. It sold pretty well. Because what’s the best thing about babies? Smell, cuteness, and all that plumpy goodness. At Wrybaby, we change up our funny onesie offerings every year, and in 2015 we introduced a another poke at the healthy baby’s cherubic condition – but with an ironic twist. It simply read, “I Hate My Thighs”. And, sorry if I’m treating you like an idiot, but here’s the definition of irony – Happening in the opposite way to what is expected, and typically causing wry amusement because of this. My fucking company’s name is literally in the definition of irony! So it was a complete surprise when, for the first time ever, our Facebook page started getting a lot of negative comments. Then a lot of threatening comments. Everyone in our office was freaking out so I tracked down the source. It was a shitpost on Ms. Magazine’s website, authored by their senior editor, no less.

I found that Ms. had a fun little hate segment on their blog called, “We Spleen”. Get it? Don’t feel bad if you didn’t. It’s their clever flip on “I Heart”. Anyway, it’s a page where they trash things they disagree with and then encourage their readers to pile on and troll the hell out of whoever was responsible. Titled Baby Fat-Shaming, they admit right off the bat that “Yes, we know it’s supposed to be funny.” but then postulates that our funny onesie would become a “harbinger of things to come later in a child’s life”. Hilariously, the author spends some time not understanding irony by explaining that “babies’ delightfully chunky baby thighs are some of the most lovable things in the world!” Mm-hm and duh. In the end she asks her readers if she’s “taking it too seriously.” Which was interesting. Because folks who think something is bullshit (and there were many in the article’s comments) don’t waste their time telling all their friends all about it. Because, well, it’s bullshit. And, to be honest, it probably would have quietly blown over in a week if we didn’t do what we did next.

On the left, the Ms. Magazine article. Upper right, the Senior Editor’s Facebook post promoting it to her troll army. Bottom right, our response and her request to divert our donation to her magazine rather than the non-profit created by Ms. Magazine.

Put yourself in our shoes. What would you have done? We weren’t going to take the onesie down. Even if we took it off our website, we were selling to boutiques around the world and “I Hate My Thighs” was a favorite among them and customers who’d already purchased it. So the design would still exist in the world. Besides, we thought the author’s assessment, and her minions’ opinions, were not only wrong, but designed to intentionally stir up trouble. So that ruled out an apology, too. Fuck that.

That leaves defending yourself. But how, when you don’t really feel like you have to? The author herself actually gave us the way forward when she opened it up to her readers. We’d do the same thing. But not the way they’d ever expect us to. Here’s a step-by-step guide to how we fought back.

Step 1. Take a Deep Breath and Be Realistic.

C’mon. It’s the tiniest of companies selling the nichiest of products to an even nichier audience against an historic publication with a fervent audience. It was stupid to think we’d ever “win” anything. And what was winning anyway? That’s the first question you need to ask yourself. What’s in it for YOU? What would make it worth it? Can you strengthen customer loyalty? Can you make money from this? Can you get a lot of exposure? Free press? We decided on all of the above and made a plan to push the conversation in that direction.

Step 2. Turn the Tables.

Near the end of the article, the author took a small break from hating on our “I Hate My Thighs” onesie to muse about how much better it would have been if it said, “I Love My Thighs”.  If you remember, we had done that two years earlier with “Love Me for My Leg Rolls”, which is on brand, funny. So we brought it out of retirement. As much as she had conjured up an affront to women from our irony, we manufactured a challenge out of her criticism. In about three hours we implemented a popularity contest between “I Hate My Thighs” and “Love Me for My Leg Rolls” on wrybaby.com. After all, Ms. had suggested an alternative. We’d let consumers use their dollars to decide which graphic should remain, and we would donate all proceeds to the Ms. Foundation for Women. We even had the balls to call the whole thing “The Ms. Magazine Challenge”. Hahaha. And to be honest, this is why it took off internationally. We made a contest out of controversy and the press LOVED IT.

Step 3. Protect Your Core.

 At this time, Wrybaby was about 70% wholesale with boutiques all over the world. So we called every store that stocked “I Hate My Thighs” to explain what happened and what we were going to do. We told them it would probably get messy and if they wanted to avoid the drama, they could exchange their “I Hate My Thighs” onesies and we’d pay for the shipping. I don’t know what we were expecting, but it sure wasn’t 100% support. Heck, more than a few stores even put them in their front windows instead of taking them off the floor. I love our boutiques. 

Step 4. Punch Your Bully in the Throat When They Think They’ve Won.

Once the challenge was all set up on wrybaby.com and the stores were notified, we hit back. Hard. Oh, not on our socials where we’d hopefully garner some support. Like I said before, people who support you, will. And plenty did. But not as vociferously and viscerally as the people piling on the hate. Which is totally understandable, because who’s got time to throw a ton of energy into fighting a ton of crazy people for a small funny onesie company you happen to like? Our strategy was to catch the hate early and attack it at the source. So we hit back in the Ms. Magazine article’s comments. That way, we’d have a permanent record of OUR narrative to fall back on if need be. You’ll see what I mean in Step 6. I still think our response was appropriately shitty at the top and hilariously enthusiastic at the end when we flipped the script. Believe me, it was so hard to take the emotion out and leave all the spite in.

This was our giant home page graphic announcing our Ms. Magazine challenge. A lot of articles, like this quote from Redbook, claimed that this was all some kind of PR stunt that we orchestrated. Which says a lot to validate our response. Once it was on the Today Show, publications everywhere started holding their own polls to see which onesie people preferred. My favorite was on PopSugar’s website where you checked a box to vote and there was only one reply under it that said, “Where’s the box marked, “Who Cares?” My sentiment exactly.

Step 5. Stay in the Fight.

This kind of thing is both emotionally and physically exhausting. But it’s also oddly exhilarating. We kept our eyes on the article comments as well as on the response to our Ms. Magazine Challenge, while our hands were busy responding to social media comments. We were replying to EVERYTHING and EVERYONE directing them to our onesie challenge on wrybaby.com. We were posting to our followers to enlist their help. We launched carefully crafted emails to our giant list. Eventually, as the story was picked up everywhere, we had to cover all that ground, too. We threw everything at the challenge.

Step 6. Avoid Traps While Capitalizing on Mistakes.

Things quickly escalated to the point where we started getting calls from radio stations across the country. One producer wanted us to go on-air with a child psychologist. Um. No. Hahaha. Pick your battles, friends. Speaking of which, we apparently irked Ms.’ Senior Editor because she sought the last word at the end of day one with a snarky comment to her article requesting we send the challenge donations to Ms. Magazine itself instead a non-profit. How bizarre is that? Why would the Senior Editor of Ms. Magazine publicly divert donations away from the non-profit foundation they originally created? So we called her out on it in the comments. Hahahaha! She later replied at length, clearly exasperated at finding herself on the ropes in the fight she herself started.

In regards to Step 6, I’m sure the author never thought she’d be defending herself to her own shitpost comments section. Hahaha

Step 7. Record Everything and Promote Your Vindication.

Eventually we stopped getting calls from local radio shows and started showing up on the Today Show, the Chicago Tribune, E online, MSN Lifestyle, UK’s Daily Mail, Comedy Central, Redbook, Cosmo… so many places! We promoted the exposure that was in our favor while directing everything to the onesie challenge. Hell, we were only an office of three people, so it was all we could do to manage this shitshow AND run our business. Despite the chaos, I recorded, snapshotted, and saved as much as I could. I felt like, when it was all said and done, it’d be helpful to have some proof that what happened, actually happened (I get to that at the end).

Step 8. Follow Through.

Look, enough is enough and we had a business to run. A week after all this started we announced the results of the Ms. Magazine challenge. Again, in the original article’s comment section. We recapped our narrative of the incident before declaring “Love Me For My Leg Rolls” the winner with 71% of the sales. And, true to our word, we retired not the offending onesie, but the ironic onesie – “I Hate My Thighs”. (Truth be told, we actually sold out of them). Then we followed through with our insistence on donating to the Ms. Foundation and reminded the senior editor and her readers what their mission was before thanking them all for the opportunity to engage with them. See? That’s how to be shitty and classy at the same time.

Our last word on the subject was somehow both positive and full of bile. The senior editor later responded with a seething checklist of “facts” about how we misrepresented her shitty article but by that time no one was really paying attention anymore.

So what happened in the end? Well, it didn’t wrap up as tidily as our onesie challenge. Even when the story eventually died out, wrybaby kept getting hassled by crazy people on Facebook for about a year and a half. Way longer than we thought. And then, some misguided social justice warrior was triggered by our Super Snapsuits, of all things. Two onesies with capes. One read “I’m Super” on the front, the other read, “Super Cute”. He posted a photo of our Super Snapsuits on display in the NYU Bookstore and falsely claimed that the blue one was marked for “boys” while the other was marked for “girls”. And then he said something like “isn’t it a tragedy that girls have to be just “Super Cute”? First of all, we don’t mark gender on anything. And secondly, doesn’t he know that Super Girl wears blue and red? Ugh. Whatever. By this time, we were honestly too tired to fight it. Besides, it was a single jerk, not an actual publication. We couldn’t forge a monetary or PR reason to fight, so we let it go and endured crazy people’s death threats for another 6 months. It was actually more sad and irritating than disruptive.

Today you can still find dusty old archival posts about our Ms. Magazine experience from publications all over the world. But what’s most interesting is how the original article was preserved at the source. It now boldly declares victory at the top – “UPDATE: Wry Baby has taken its “I Hate My Thighs” snapsuit off its website in response to the uproar caused by the following Ms. Blog post!” All the comments are wiped clean, including those from the folks who supported us and our good fight back. There’s a link now at the end of the article directing you to buy feminist onesies in their own Ms. store. Which is why you need to record this stuff as it’s happening. You may want to use it someday.

And what happened to Wrybaby? Believe it or not, that whole Ms. Magazine shitshow actually didn’t do THAT much in sales despite the crazy exposure. Which is something to consider if you think (or your client thinks) the road to riches could be paved in hate mail. It isn’t. Would I do it again? Hell yes. But in the long run, it’s always best to run your business for the folks who get it and appreciate it. Those good people are your people. They’ll support you longer and recommend you more wholeheartedly than any flighty trend hunter or thrill seeker ever will. So keep those guys happy! That’s what we’re still doing at Wrybaby. And between you and me, I heard they might bring back “I Hate My Thighs” soon. ;-)

DAVE SOPP – Creative

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

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How to Make the Most of an Important Opportunity.

I’m a dad. And I love it. When I had my first and only child, I changed my whole career to cater to those who felt the same, just so I could end my horrible ad biz hours. I figured, why spend all my family time building someone else’s fortune when I could be trying to build my own? More about that somewhere else. The point here is, there’s a funny thing I hadn’t really considered. Babies, they grow up. The little guy we dragged to the big gift shows (like NY Now, Atlanta Gift Show, ABC Show in Vegas, and more) eventually became a teen. And, while still game, he was NOT super stoked to be in a trade show booth for weeks. I have no qualms about declaring myself the King of Distraction for kids. I can make a game out of anything, any time. Ask anyone who knows me. So it was a slow day at NY Now, and Kelly was off doing store visits when I decided to gamify our boredom. In my notebook, I outlined a page of cartoon panels. Then I drew in the first panel. No words, just a character talking. Then I passed it over to my extra-bored 14-year old son and said, “Write what he’s saying.” In the second panel, I drew another character and I let him name them. That was the beginning of Wilbur & Milimur. So there you go for your first question, “WTF with names like Wilbur and Milimur!?” To this day, I don’t know where he got those names.

Look, these get inappropriate real fast. But keep in mind who starts it. I draw the first panel, my then 14-year old boy writes it’s copy. Then I draw the next panel for him to fill the words into. Two dudes messing around trying to throw each other off balance and CRYING LAUGHING for hours.

We kept at it. Back and forth, back and forth. I’d draw a panel, he’d write it. When we got to the end of a page, we agreed the whole story had to resolve. We finished the first one and then it got really interesting. And also, kind of inappropriate. Since he had the hang of it, I started drawing curve-balls to see how he’d write himself out of it. He, of course, started doing the same thing right back, writing really weird stuff to throw me off. And then it got even weirder. We were in absolute hysterics. It was so hilarious we forgot we were in the Javits Center, in the middle of a big trade show, in Manhattan. As we drew the fourth panel, both of us in tears from laughter, we were 100% shocked to look up and see a buyer in our booth, standing there, literally, open-mouthed. Apparently she’d been there for a bit. Old, white, cranky. It turned out she was the buyer for the NY Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), and she was decidedly put off by our indifference to her status. She was super shitty to us both (yes, both me and a 14-year old), and she left abruptly without order anything. I often think back on that lost opportunity. And I always come to the same conclusion – that I didn’t miss an opportunity. When you own your own business and you put as much into it as we all do/did, sometimes there are more important things to gain from a trade show than a momentary sale. I had a much more valuable experience with my boy that day than any buyer could lavish on my business, any day. Priorities and perspective, friends. Priorities and perspective.

A little before and after for ‘ya. I kept the original drawings and, when I got home from that trade show, cleaned them up in Photoshop. The boy asked me to re-type his hand writing, but I kept it in places (like the sign on Baxter’s Happy Place and below when Wilbur attacks). This one is still on of my favorites and we still use the final punchline together.

Note: Wilbur and Milimur both die frequently in these. And I hate to be that guy, but remember it’s a 14-year old who wrote all these. At this writing he’s 19, a college student at a respected institution, and not in jail or an asylum. The square gag was a joke we shared about playing Grand Theft Auto on Playstation. I think you can figure it out.

I grouped the most depressing one with the most inappropriate one so you could be twice as appalled at our bored juvenility.

The fun was in the fact that neither of us knew where each story would go. These two ended with my favorite copy and art twists.

The one on the left doesn’t have much copy because it was near the end of the day and the boy was getting bored with the game. We did try and keep the comic going when we got home from that trade show, but it didn’t have the magic of our initial bored spontaneity. We finished a three-part series of Wilbur and Milimur entering something in their county fair. And, for some reason, we brought them to ancient Rome in a time machine. I think the boy was studying Roman history or something and it was my last chance to try and keep him engaged. Hahaha.

Yes. I made Moo cards with links to the complete Wilbur & Milimur collection on Tumblr.

DAVE SOPP – Creative

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

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How to Celebrate Your Crazy-Ass Fans.

My writer-partner and I were freelancing all over the place in San Francisco doing a LOT of tech stuff for Dell, Nortel, Sun Microsystems and the like, when we somehow got called in to Hoffman-Lewis to work on a campaign welcoming the Oakland Raiders back to town. Al Davis punished Oakland by moving the Raiders to Los Angeles in 1982 because they wouldn’t pay to install luxury boxes at the Coliseum. Then in 1995, Oakland finally agreed to invest in an upgrade, so Al brought the Raiders back. Andrew and I were assigned to creating the campaign that would welcome the team home. I don’t know if you know much about football. I don’t. I mean, I know what’s going on and enjoy a good game, but I’m no expert on the subject. But here’s what I do know. Raiders fans ARE FUCKING INSANE. Seriously. God help you if you’re not wearing the silver and black in that stadium. Heck, you’d feel uncomfortable if you didn’t have your shirt off and your chest painted with the Raiders logo. You could straight-up be murdered. Raiders fans have a super unhealthy love for their team. So we used that. Not the murder part, the rabid fanatic part. Well, almost the murder part. I’ll get to that later.

It felt to us like the Raiders coming back was cool enough, but to the fans it was freaking bananas. THEY WERE SO EXCITED. Because being a Raiders fan was so much a part of their lifestyle. These fans dedicated a LOT of their energy (and disposable income) to being super scary fans at those games. Then we were like, wait…why? Why so over-the-line extreme? Did they think that level of fandom actually affected the game or something? The answer was yes. So we pitched full newspaper pages with beautifully rich, black and white sports photography of gripping Raiders action. You could see the sea of fans blurred out in the background. All blurred out but one. The fan who’s crazy antics actually caused the pictured play to succeed. It was a graphic celebration of the beauty and brutality of the Raiders as a team, AND a recognition of the beautiful mess of their fan base. Basically we made the fans part of the team. And the tagline, “Make It Happen” said so much. I explained the concept, but it was also a great rally cry that got you jacked to go to a game, so you could do crazy you.

Left: Full-page newspaper ad. Right: Detail from that ad.

This is the murder part. My favorite part of this assignment was choosing a theme song for the Raiders return. What would blast through the Coliseum when the Raiders hit the field for the first time? What would we play under radio spots? To Andrew and I it was a flat-out no-brainer. AC/DC’s Back in Black! It was aggressive enough and, you know, one of the team colors was in it. Hahaha. Everyone at the agency was super stoked about it and when they pitched it to the Raiders, (as freelancers Andrew and I weren’t invited to the meeting, thank goodness) someone on the client side asked, “Did they just say they were in a bang with a gang!?” Hahaha. We totally forgot that was in the second verse. Oakland. Gangs. Nope. 

True to the freelance advertising lifestyle, none of this work ended up running. And I can’t even remember why. I think the Raiders were set to come back but then something delayed them, so they just shelved the work. I also remember that the Raiders planned on introducing Personal Seat Licenses (PSL’s) on their return. They would charge you a huge fee for the privilege of being able to buy season tickets for your seat. How’s that for welcoming your fans back?  Super unpopular. So that might have been why they decided to just play it quiet. Because when they DID play again there wasn’t a special campaign or fanfare like we were planning. 

DAVE SOPP – Creative

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

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How to Compete Against Nike.

OMG. What do you do when you’re a respected sports brand that’s being buried under the weight of Nike’s “Just Do It” campaign? You get serious about owning your story. That’s what we pitched to Mizuno USA. What? Haven’t heard of Mizuno? That’s understandable. You probably aren’t a professional athlete. Or a soon-to-be professional athlete. Because those people know Mizuno. While Nike was busy making bazillions educating the masses and promoting the romance of athleticism to regular consumers, Mizuno was focused on making great gear for real players. Not just great players. Regular players. Sure, Mizuno had big-time connections. For example, Chipper Jones and Marquis Grissom (pictured below) were actually on Mizuno’s advisory board, making equipment better instead of just getting paid to pose with it. Mizuno’s real passion was for serious athletes at all levels – high school, club, college, majors. When I was an AD at Hyett, Boradbent, and Hiembrodt, we pitched Mizuno as the brand that lives in the locker. Not on the catwalk. In fact, we even lined the conference room with lockers for the presentation. It was great theater.

But let’s step back a sec. So if Mizuno was the real players choice, I needed to show that. Nike was using fashion photographers to represent their ethos. All that glamour wasn’t going to work for us (and we couldn’t afford to do what they were doing anyway). It felt like we had to do the opposite. That’s when I found Doug Menuez. Doug was an amazing young photojournalist (and sweet Jesus you should see what he’s doing now) who had a run-and-gun style that was perfect for capturing the candid grit of what players see and do day-to-day. We countered Nike’s colorful photoshoots with deep, moody, grainy, black and white images and stirring, understated headlines. And we used cheap Dymo tape to deliver our tagline, “Serious Performance”. Because that was the visual language of the locker rooms Mizuno thrived in.

So here’s what we did - because our photography was to be editorial in nature (gritty, raw, and real), you couldn’t fake it. We couldn’t show Mizuno a tight comp with some great image we found with an awesome headline, get approval and then go shoot it. No, instead we started by scouting an athlete and location, spend all day shooting them playing, hoping to get emotional gold, pick an image, go to town writing a series of emotional headline/captions for that specific image, and then get it to the client for approval. It was all super risky because it put a lot of the process in the hands of fate (and our excellent photographer). If we came up with nothing at the shoot, we were fucked.

Good news: You get to work on an amazing sports brand. Bad News: Their product ads. This is the worst news you could possibly give an art director. But it was the hard truth. Mizuno just didn’t have the luxury of doing what Nike was Just Doing (see what I did there?) by making a ton of sexy branding ads. So this project was a lot about my making the most elegant product ads I could. Everyone’s seen a baseball glove, so it didn’t have to be huge. And making them small, and the only thing in full color, actually had the same effect as making them huge on the page. We captured the emotion of the sport and instantly telegraphed that Mizuno provided everything you’d need to excel at that sport.

I really love the writing on these. My writer, Andrew Tonkin, was so good at these even though I don’t think he’d ever stepped foot in a stadium in his life (feel free to comment, Andrew.). But that’s what I love about what we do. You work on so many things from sports equipment to olive oil to enterprise mobile middleware, and you have to become not only an instant expert on that product or service, but also know exactly how to talk to the people who ARE experts on that product or service. It’s bananas. Oh, the photo on the bottom right is what the amazing Doug Menuez did/does so well. I wish I had more of his photos from this project without all my advertising junk all over them.

DAVE SOPP – Creative

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

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How to Explain the Future.

Are you a huge enterprise looking to untether yourself from legacy systems to take full advantage of cloud computing? Is it 2003 and “cloud computing” isn’t even a term yet? If both of these things are true, you probably saw this campaign I created for Sybase, the leader in mobile middleware. Let’s settle on “mobile middleware” for a second. Sound boring? Hell yes. And back in 2003 NOBODY wanted to work on this kind of stuff except me, and the agency I helped establish and was a partner in. Godfrey Q and Partners took on clients that we thought would create our exciting future. It was hard. It was complicated. It was work no one wanted to do, or they did really badly to keep the lights on. But, as you’ll see, this was selling a very real future that we now, just 17 years on, take completely for granted.

One of my favorite things to do is to take really complicated stuff and make it really understandable. In San Francisco’s very first tech boom, there was plenty of that work to go around. I worked on campaigns for Dell, Intel, Micron, Adobe, Macromedia, Sun Microsystems, Symantec, Borland, Philips Videoconferencing, Nortel, Sprint Telecommunications, and so much more for this very reason. In the beginning, it all needed a lot of explaining to get people to even understand what they were all trying to do, much less invest in their vision.

Sybase’s vision was already a reality, even back then. They had to convince big businesses that they could do crazy, futuristic things with help from Sybase. Field force automation! Mobile data management! In other words, if you were a big manufacturer, you had a huge opportunity to know where your all your shit was at every stage of delivery. You’d have complete control of every single box that left your facility. Same with healthcare providers! You could see your patient and access their records from a mobile device. You could write a prescription and it would be transmitted securely (a big deal for healthcare!) in real-time to a pharmacist, and then the entire appointment could be stored digitally in the provider’s database. Remember, when we did this work, THE IPHONE WAS STILL 4 YEARS AWAY FROM EXISTING. Sybase made this all happen on handheld PDA’s and the like.

So, enough about me dating myself. What I just explained above was how I originally heard the brief for this project. It kept me awake trying to solve the advertising problem while the account person went on and on about middleware and enterprise solutions and blah, blah, blah. To me, a problem like this wasn’t solved by bold exclamations of how futuristic our offerings were. Cut out the tech speak and explain the advantages in a matter-of-fact way. If this was the way of the future, then we needed to show our customers the roadmap to how they could use it. So that’s exactly what I did. There was a great book by Chronicle Books called, Hitting the Road – The Art of the American Road Map. I used this as an excuse to expense it (FYI, art directors are always looking for excuses to buy pretty art books). It’s a wonderful collection of maps from the past, and I used it for inspiration to create my enterprise maps of the future. Our customers would be Healthcare, Manufacturing, Big Tech and the like, so my landscape had to depict their world. I found an amazing source for this, a company (brilliantly) called Xplane. I sketched out detailed maps of environments (and what would populate them) and they’d whip up ultra-detailed monochromatic versions. To this day, I marvel at their environments. Then I’d spotlight areas of the map in color and arrange them in an order that naturally led you from point A to C (or D) naturally, without numbering them or using dotted lines or whatever. And in lieu of a headline, I designed a modern version of the old map title graphic. In the end we literally showed businesses a roadmap to their future.

 Ok, fun-fact time! I added a little secret Easter egg to every ad. C’mon, there was so much going on in those backgrounds, who could resist? And it was super innocent. The only people who knew were me, and my amazing production house rep (Hi, Oksana!). To every environment, we had Xplane add a person walking along holding hands with a monkey.

DAVE SOPP – Creative

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

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How to Be Hilarious In a Language You Don't Understand.

Ahhhh…Safe Baby Handling Tips. The onesie illustrations that became the 2005 board book I co-authored with my wife, Kelly, which launched a bazillion social media posts that don’t credit us as authors or me as the illustrator. Sigh. But once in a long while, someone will use a cool, free tool called “Google” and they’ll see that these funny Tips actually came from a real person. And then they work with that person to make new, funny things! Dude! That totally happened to me!

If you have a minute, you can read how this super fun project for Iceland’s public bus network, Strætó, came about. And, how bananas successful it was (over half of Iceland’s entire population was reached organically). True story! Basically, Strætó wanted to educate their riders on bus etiquette. It wasn’t my idea (it was theirs), but I wish it was (so badly), because it’s the perfect use for the Tips format.

Of course the baby one is my favorite of the series. And thank God I’ve never seen THIS happen on the bus. The tea set one? All those dudes are my brother. And yes, he really had that amazing mustache.

My Handling Tips formula is hard to nail, even though it’s pretty straightforward. Have a simple base instruction, and a victim. I’ve expanded the Handling Tips format into non-baby topics before, and that’s what really sort of brought this formula to light. I happened to have spent 15 years riding the bus in San Francisco, and let me tell you…I’ve seen some shit. So to me, there were PLENTY of victim opportunities to exploit for some juicy Bus Riding Tips.

When I did what I did for Safe Baby Handling Tips, I roughed out scenarios, then shot some scrap to work from for final. It was 2005, so I drew all the images on paper, scanned them in, cleaned them up in Photoshop before bringing them into Illustrator for layout. But now, I’m all Procreate on a first gen iPad Pro. For the Strætó project, I drew each part of each scenario in Procreate, exported the PSD to my desktop to clean it up, imported to Illustrator, and vectorized. Each Tip became its own layered Illustrator file so it could be scaled to meet any need Strætó might have for it (social media posts, bus shelter posters, etc.).

Hi, I’m Dave! World’s worst photographer! I like to shoot my own scrap to reference for the drawings because it makes it go faster. You’d think I’d enjoy that part the most - drawing it all. But the real fun is in placing the drawings in the template. Because that’s how you find out if what you thought was funny actually is funny. And most of the time it’s not. Hahaha. I have to redraw stuff more than you’d think so that everything works together like it’s supposed to.

We had such a fun time working together so I was made an honorary Strætó bus rider with my own pass and everything! I can’t wait to go visit and use the new bus riding skills I learned. I even got my own Icelandic last name. Did you know that they use your fathers name and then add “son” or “daughter” (dóttir) to the end. Yes, my dad’s name really is Clyde.

A lot of the characters in Strætó’s riding tips are my family members. My brother and his wife were visiting from California when I was working on this, so they ended up being in a LOT of the drawings. My son was home from college and made a cameo in a few, alongside Kelly, my wife. Of course, my clients were also drawn in. Hahaha. Guðmundur, whose awesome idea this was, appears as a driver while his teammate, Camila, appears as a passenger. We handled the title translations in the end because Icelandic is Greek to me (see what I did there?). I love that no matter what language they were in, these drawings could work anywhere in the world. Because idiots on buses is so universal. 

DAVE SOPP – Creative

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

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How To Bring Your Idea to Life.

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

“Hello Dave and Kelly.           

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

Best regards from Iceland

Guðmundur Heiðar Helgason | Public Relations”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DAVE SOPP – Creative

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

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How To Boil It Down.

I have a knack for making a complicated message, simple and understandable. When I was a freelance Art Director in San Francisco, way back at the dawn of the Internet, I was doing a permalance gig at J. Walter Thompson with my writer-partner and friend, Andrew Tonkin. We were there for months doing all kinds of interesting things that most creatives would stick their noses up at. It was some very technical tech work they were handling. But for us, it was just a bunch of hard problems to solve. For example, we were given the opportunity to show communications giant, Nortel, how to sell newly developed sophisticated switches to telecom providers so they could supply something new on the horizon that was way faster than dial-up Internet. I think it was called, oh, DSL or something. Yeah, I’ve been doing this for a long time.

Anyhoo, Andrew and I also got to try and convince engineers that coding with Java was easy. I didn’t know then if it actually was, and I don’t actually know now if it was back then. I may have been the only Art Director in SF to know how to make an animated gif banner ad (TRUE!), but it wasn’t like I was a super goober or something. Same with Andrew. All we knew was that if we could boil down what the nice account person took 45 minutes to tell us, we’d be golden.

And this little campaign was the end result and my favorite example of what I like to do. Take something hard and boring and turn it into something simple and kind of delightful. OMG, you wouldn’t believe how hard it was to find an illustrator who could ape the Dick and Jane children’s book style, though (Chuck Pyle)! We got Chuck to do the illustrations, got a photographer to shoot blank books on different elementary-school-type-desk surfaces, then married them all together. This is dumb, but I especially like how we handled the legal (running up the book shadow). It just disappears, making the ad look even more simple.

DAVE SOPP – Creative

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

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How to Be One of the Cool Kids.

Design > Trade Show Booth

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DAVE SOPP – Creative

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

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How to Be a Whole Bunch of Different Illustrators.

Illustration > Stuf

OMG this was fun. But how can illustrating art toys, not be? I’ve written about how this brand was created (and why), and you can see how Stuf’s design process went. From an illustrative standpoint, I wanted to try some things I’d never done before: like try out a really minimalist modern style; or experiment with different materials. The idea was to make each Stuf theme seem like it was from a different artist, but what you see here is all me. :-)

ILLUSTRATION: Some of the concepts I drew up for the plush project, Stuf. All based on real birds and darned if I can remember who that cute fella in the bottom middle is. Anyhoo, the idea with Bird Stuf was that it’d be super modern in the style of Charley Harper.

ILLUSTRATION: Circus Stuf was probably the most challenging and the most fun because of it. I really wish I did the acrobat. I threw the Ringmaster doll photo in so you can see how the flat illustrations translate to the Stuf dolls. And below is a fake Photoshop job I did to test a two color version of the Big Stuf Elephant.

ILLUSTRATION: The march to the final Big Stuf Robot. I didn’t think anyone would remember punch cards. So sad. Hahaha.

ILLUSTRATION: This was a round I considered for International Stuf. With, of course, each figure representing a country. I couldn’t help but think of Mary Blair when doing these.

ILLUSTRATION: Pirate Stuf was entirely different from all that other mod stuff. It begged to be rough and sea-faring. And the back of each was an hilarious character trait. The guy with the mutton chops is Curly Pete and he was the only one “who knows where the treasure’s hid”.

DAVE SOPP – Creative

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

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