Selling dreams is what made America great….
by Art Chantry ( art@artchantry.com)
Recently, I wrote a little thing about the new Wal-Mart logo. in case you don’t remember it, I pointed out that in the history of American advertising, there were only two business concerns with big enough cajones to actually use an anus in their logo – The Butthole Surfers and Wal-Mart! then I showed their logos side by side and many of you got a big laff.
Well, I was wrong. I forgot about this item. this is the official logo of the “American Sphincter Society” (A.S.S.). a friend of mine (charles krafft) sent this to me about 20 years ago. I have NO IDEA if it’s a real logo or a joke. there are so many ‘joke logos’ out there floating in use that it gets really hard to tell them all apart. so, I don’t know what the story is behind this one.
One of the more uncomfortable things that I’ve witnessed in the design world is the propensity of oversell one’s self. designers basically sell ideas for a living (like advertising men or politicians.) so, the first thing you have to do is sell yourself. If you can actually convince yourself of the worth of your product, selling it to a sucker is simple – because you’re not even lying! you actually BELIEVE in it’s worth! even if it’s really total crap! the secret of successful salesmanship is self-delusion.
Graphic designers have to walk into a room of haters and sell them your hard personal work. everybody there thinks you’re an idiot or a buffoon and you have to present your hard inner self (and you precious little concepts) to these hard core business greedheads who all think you’re a waste of money. to do this well requires an enormous ego and/or a complete severing disconnect between your feelings and your actions. It REALLY helps if you have no feelings at all. total confidence is the only recourse you can present – aka, ‘con’ game. (sociopaths really do well in our biz).
I’ve juried design shows scores of times over the years. one of the results of this emotional battleground (that is graphic design) is that it rewards (essentially) LYING. many of the entries that get entered into these design award shows are fakes. often, they make it through the process and win accolades and prestige. but, they are completely phony campaigns and artifacts doctored up to simply win these contests. and because of the nature of these ‘design award’ competitions (being businesses themselves) it’s nearly impossible to spot them. fake design work like this silly ASS logo (that is assuming it’s a just a joke and not real) can actually with design competitions with ease – well, except for the subject matter, that is.
I know this is true, because I’ve done it myself. once as a joke ‘test’ (it actually was published in a big book!) and other times because my stuff actually gets published in contests I never even enter (!). In fact, I have no idea where they found some of the stuff I’ve won awards for, because I never sent them to them. I know in design show juries I’ve participated in discussions that were held as to whether the entries that showed up were “good enough” and “maybe we should call up Milton Glaser and see if he anything laying around we can put in. It’ll sell more books.” In fact I’ve actually participated in some of those conversations at design jury events.
One time after a long long day of battling over entered work to create an illustration annual, the owner of the company who published the book expressed dislike for what we chose and started wanting to swap our selections for HIS favorite selections. the judges protested in anger at his arrogance. when the book came out six months later, the publisher had completely re-worked the selections to fit his taste, ignoring our hard work.I mean to say, the entire show was a fake, not just a few entries.
The other problem in this area that I run into is that I try to keep all the images I do that I like. I may run through 30 or 50 different designs for a single logo. clients can be picky creatures, ya know. often the final design is one I don’t particularly like. but I gather all of the ‘good ones’ together and stick them in the same file. sometimes I don’t even save the final client selected version, because I don’t particularly like it. I place them in a single file with all my other logos I
;ve done (probably thousands at this point). When people occasionally ask me for samples of my logos to consider for a book, it’s much easier to just download a disk of this stuff and send it to them. that process of indifference to what I send often results in an unused logo that was rejected by the client actually making into design history.
You see, tis stuff may seem a little shocking, but this sort of thing has always been true. If you actually go back into the extremely poorly documented history of graphic design, you’ll find again and again that the ‘famous’ logo or poster or book or whatever may never have been used at all. the design history books are completely peppered with fake design work – stuff that was never actually used in any capacity other than ‘design history” and never really seen by anybody except other designers. discovering that fact was a real shock to my more innocent mind back then. now I just consider it part of the turf.
so, a lot of bogus design work out there has become really really famous simply because egomaniacal crazy-ass design creeps and ruthless promoters and business greedheads simply PUSHED it real hard and cleverly, thus MAKING IT REAL.
Disillusioned yet? don’t be. this is our whole cultural history – selling dreams is what made America great.
I wonder if this ASS logo ever won an award? Is it in the history books yet?
ADDENDUM:
Art Chantry:that reminds me: that even though i had only fully professionally finished printed projects done for actual real clients in my portfolio when i started out (i put myself through school doing graphic design), when i went to show my portfolio in the big city (seattle), they dismissed everything i had done as “student work”. that was because i was a student while i was making a living as a graphic designer at the same time. that meant all the client based pro work i’d been doing wasn’t real work – but fake crap like ‘all those students make’. it seems the very THREAT that i may have faked the work in my portfolio (even though it wasn’t faked at all, but hard-earned real paying design work) was enought to get all my work tossed out into the shitter by the hardcore pros i was trying to get hired by. basically, all those fakers out there kinda ruined my chances because i had the audacity of presenting REAL work, even though it was done while also a student. i had to (once again) start over from scratch. so it goes.