Episode 03: Rural Electrification, Hope for Obama and Posters for Good

 

Two Designers Walk Into A Bar

Episode 03: Rural Electrification, Hope for Obama and Posters for Good

Released October 14, 2020
© 2020 Two Designers Media, LLC

Welcome to Two Designers Walk Into a Bar. A place where pop culture, loving creatives, discover design icons that make us tick. And we share a few cocktails in the process.

Today, we’re getting involved, raising our hands, being counted and exercising our civic appreciation for great poster design. We’ll be moved and take a stand as we reach across the aisle... to get another cocktail...when two designers walk into a bar.

So Todd, I have a poster today that I’m really excited to tell you about. It’s been one of my favorites for years, although I will admit, I didn't know about it until I was in design school and took a design history class.

Hm, okay. Interesting. How old is it?

Oh it is – I'm bad at math which is why I'm a designer, but it is – I would say…Oh…80…85-years old. So older than me by a couple of years.

A few years. Yeah. so you’re batting around the same thing as our ad mascot timeframe, which was about 90 and a hundred years, too. So that’s pretty cool. It’s interesting. I think you’re obsessed with that time period.

For some reason I must be.

So I also have a poster that is much younger than that, which is unusual because usually I go for the old retro stuff. I’m going to be talking about this not from the design standpoint so much – because I think so much has been said about the design already – that is so commonplace. Rather a little bit of the backstory. A little bit of the drama.

Wow. This sounds juicy. And without further ado, let's jump in and get started.

Tell me in the audience, what kind of poster you have in mind?

Oh, you know what, we didn’t talk about our theme yet. We, we both have posters, but really what we’re talking about is communicating a big idea. Maybe an idea if you will – or a movement.

Yes, definitely.

Elliot, you’re here to talk about the same thing, right?

Oh yeah. Well, let me…hold on just a second…let me put my a bottle cap collection away.

Yes Todd. I’m here today to talk to you about posters. In all seriousness this was how sometimes when you’re exposed to something for the first time, it just has stopping power. Even if it’s like in art history or something. When you’re walking through a museum or just something you stumbled across in everyday life. And I always loved the things that are – I think with posters and with design artifacts in general, and we’ve talked about this before in past episodes – these things that are meant to be ephemeral, but then they just have the staying power. There’s just something about them that is really magnetic. And they are so good at communicating an idea that it resonates across generations.

So Elliot, what was it about this particular poster…first of all tell me and the audience the poster or posters you’re talking about and then tell me why it was so magnetic to you when you first.

Absolutely. So the poster was actually part of a series and it was the Lester Beall posters for the Rural Electrification Administration. This is something that was in the mid-thirties to late thirties. This particular poster was from the first series. A lot of them had titles because they were about a very specific thing like water or radio or something like that. This one is a more general, high-level poster. I don’t even know if it has a title, but basically it’s two children…probably early teens…like sixth grade…seventh grade…eighth grade age…rural teens. They’re leaning against a white fence and they are in black and white. In the background, the sky has these horizontal red and white stripes. Behind the kids themselves, it is a blue background. And then along the bottom plank of the fence it just reads in red stencilled type, “Rural Electrification Administration.” Then underneath that and even smaller spaced-out all caps type, “US Department of Agriculture.”

So it’s just this general sort of capstone poster that really did a great job of introducing rural America to this idea of electrification…

Okay Elliot. Pause. That doesn’t sound like it has any electricity in it at all.

You’re talking about the fact that there’s no device? There’s no light bulb in it? There’s no…

Are they leaning against an electric fence?

That would be interesting. I think they would have a different expression on their faces than they do in this poster. It’s really like rural America. It is young America.

Between the Wars, right?

At this time period just to contrast – and it’s kind of fascinating actually that we’re talking about this Between-the-Wars idea – when this poster came out…when this program is launched as part of the new deal administration, only 11% of the United States had electricity.

Wow.

At the same time, Europe…continental Europe was 99%.

Wow.

So the US federal government was really worried about falling behind. Basically all in all this program ended when World War II started in 1941 for obvious reasons there were distractions, right?

He went on to design other posters in service of the war effort, but he designed three series of posters between 1937 and 1941. And it was all just around this idea of utilities.

Just like I said a minute ago…telephone…radio…electricity…running water…all of these things that today we take for granted. In fact thinking about this, it would be really, really interesting if one of the movements today – especially in the age of COVID with so many children learning from home – there has been talk for years about WiFi and that the internet is a basic right. There should be a universal utility high-speed internet available like anything else. So I think if Beall were alive today – like this poster instead of maybe being horizontal stripes yeah – It'd be like arc stripes sort of radiating out, right? There’d be a kid in front of a laptop or something.

All right. Elliot you used the word ‘movement.’ I haven’t even told you what I’m going to talk about today, but on the surface there seems to be a couple of things in common. Mine’s not a giant reveal. I’m going to talk about Shepard Fairey’s poster that he did of Barack Obama the famous “Hope” poster. I’m not going to talk about it in terms of the design – because anyone with eyes has seen this poster and they understand what it looks like. If you know, Shepard Fairey’s work, you’re familiar with his style. He’s a street artist. He’s known for his boldness. He’s known for using stencils. And he’s a pretty well-known art activist too – which is really appealing. The interesting thing about his work is it comes from skate culture and hardcore culture…extensive use of appropriated images…and stencilled and things like that.

There’s a real urgency to the work done. I said, “movement.” I’m not going to talk about a candidate. What attracted Shepard Fairey to doing this began when Barack Obama seemed to be tapping into messaging that [Fairey] really could get behind. He thought it was new and thought it was different and thought it was a movement. He reached out and just said, “Hey, do you mind…?” to the campaign. “Do you mind if I do some stuff?” And they’re like, “Yeah, sure.” So it wasn’t commissioned by the campaign to begin with. Then as we say here in the 2000-twenties…it got crazy viral and it took off. Things started happening that would be challenging. So back to Lester Beall and his version of activism and posters.

Yeah Todd. I would say he may be definitely influential. But less controversial probably. I guess you wouldn’t really hear about the controversy because none of those people had electricity – unless they mounted a letter writing campaign. Be hard to know about. But yeah, I want to quickly talk about Lester Beall because I think he and Shepard Fairey do have some things in common, even though they’re generations apart as creative people.

Lester Beall was very influenced by European art movements of the time. And we will post a link. There is a wonderful link. He is actually an AIGA medalist and there is a wonderful interview – far too deep to get into on our podcast today. But I’ll link to it on AIGA website, because whenever there is a medalist awarded, they always talk about what was the criteria for getting the award. They talk all about his influences. He was very influenced by European art movements of the time. And basically one of the great quotes that I think speaks to how he arrived at the design for this poster – much less a series – was that Beale felt that the designer must work with one goal in mind to integrate the elements in such a manner that they will combine to produce a result that will convey not merely a static commercial message, but an emotional reaction as well.

If we can produce the kind of art which harnesses the power of the human instinct for that harmony of form beauty and cleanness, that seems inevitable – when you see it – we may be doing a good job for our clients.

All right Elliot. Let me share a quote that Shepard Fairey said about this, his particular poster and we can contrast their use of words. He says, “A lot of people were digging Obama but they didn’t have any way to symbolically show their support. It became very clear quickly that the demand for an image like that had not been supplied and that the Obama supporters were very hungry for it and also motivated to spread it.” It’s interesting they’re saying the same thing, but obviously Shepard Fairey is saying it…you know…80 years later and a little bit more vernacular.

What I think is cool about both of those is using their talents to help a cause that they believe in.

Right Todd. Definitely credit where credit is due. Shepard Fairey was able to hone his chops over the years. Of course with his Andre The Giant Has a Posse, right? You know starting from the crummy Xerox stickers all the way up to the Obey movement and all these sorts of things. Really, if you think about it he did a great job kind of laying the groundwork about building this persona around this public individual.

You know the first time around – of course – he was a pro wrestler, but that really made the segue into making this other person heroic that maybe wasn’t like a “character,” but needed in some way to sort of be a character. To be larger than life. To give people something to believe in.

Well, unlike the Lester Beall posters. Lester Beall was communicating a concept, right. Shepard Fairey was communicating a person with a concept and you’re exactly right. He had to turn a candidate into an icon.

And interestingly enough there’s plenty of other political figures and leaders that kind of share the same pose from that particular Obama poster. Shepard Fairey says he was inspired by John F. Kennedy. Inspired by Abraham Lincoln on the $5 bill. You can even see some Che Guevara in there. It’s slightly shot from below. They’re looking up. Three-quarter view.

Again, very heroic. Very comic book-like.

Right Elliot. Very bold. Of course the colors that he used – red and blue and a kind of cream. While it was done in 2008 the colors were a little washed out. They were grayed out a little bit. So it felt like nostalgia. The interesting thing I read about the way he did that – obviously given his background as a street artist – stencils were really commonplace. It wasn’t like he was trying to capture a realistic portrait of this person. But what he thought consciously about was ‘I’m going to use red. I'm going to use blue. I’m going to use this cream color.’

Todd, he basically took the color out of of this candidate. It won’t be a thing anymore. It’s like…just make it an icon. So it doesn’t have to mean anything. Other than that.

I wonder about this Lester Beall poster – you raise a really good point. This was done in the mid-thirties. If we were to modernize or update this poster, what would the kids look like? Who would be pictured in there today?

It might still be a boy and a girl. They’re probably siblings. If one is assigning some sort of background story to this photo, would it be kids who are black and brown? More to the audience he was speaking to at the time – rural farmers – they were probably white. You know, if you’re in the middle of Iowa, Kansas or where ever, one of the things I feel is interesting about both of these things is it’s very much snapshots or artifacts of the time in which they were created.

Doing a little bit of homework about the Hope poster – the Obama poster. It’s really funny because someone asked Shepard Fairey in an interview – I think it was in Esquire. Did you find this in your research where he talked about Obama was rolling along as president, “You made this portrait, what do you think of the job he’s doing?”

He was like, “Yeah. Not what I thought.”

That was interesting. I’ll get into that in a little bit more.

You know the thing that I think is cool – I’m going to sort of riff on art activism for a second – he designed the poster in one day in early 2008 and then printed a total of like 700 of them. He sold 350. Put 350 more up in public. He used the money from the sale of the first 350 to continue printing more. All of the proceeds from selling the image went back into making more stuff for the Obama campaign. At this point he’s completely independent. They gave him the go ahead to do it, but they’re not connected in any way. They’re like, “Yeah sure. An artist wants to do a poster of our candidate? Sure. Why not?” Flash forward to October of 2008 and they have now printed 300,000 posters. They’ve sold less than 2000 of them and have given the rest away or displayed them with well over a million stickers.

So Elliot, they were cranking. These things were everywhere and it really became a symbol of the Obama campaign. It started as an independent artist getting involved. They had a voice they wanted to share about a particular candidate. It turned into the official graphic of the campaign.

Now Todd I think there was a whole lot of “hope” for the candidate. The candidate was seen as a different type of candidate and the poster was seen as a different way to talk about a candidate. It really was sort of filled with inspiration and vision.

Powerful. Like there was no mistaking what it was all about. I think what I really like about both of these posters – definitely the Shepard Fairey poster – is that it’s such a quick read and it’s so bold. You look at it and it just hits all the right notes. I think this is like a reboot of America. This is like America…I don’t know…3.0 or whatever version you would think about this as the America of the future.

To your point earlier, “We're going to get things done. It’s a new form of government.” You know, it really was a movement. It was seen as a very, very forward thinking,

Hey, Todd, I don't know about you, but I need to get all this wheat paste off my hands. So how about we wash up, take a quick break, top off our drinks and meet back here around the bar and just a minute.

Great Elliot be back in a minute.

I think the poster really does a good job of embodying the spirit of what the artist felt. Then it obviously translated once the campaign co-opted it, and really ran with it. I think they were smart enough to look at it and say, “Oh! This is guy is doing something far better than we could ever do on our own. Let’s with this.”

There are a couple of things I want to bring up just as a point of clarification. If knowing Shepard, Fairey and knowing what I know about him…I don’t know him personally, but being familiar with his career arc, the original run of posters were screenprints weren’t they?

They were. Then like when he was doing the thousands and thousands of posters, at that point those were offset printed, right? There were more mass produced posters. Right?

I believe so.

Because I was thinking about that with regard to the Lester Beall poster and the fact that it is also three colors, but that was mass produced. That was offset lithography, but it was three spot colors. It wasn’t four color process. At that time, four color process was nearly as sophisticated as it is today. You know, it was all photographic. It was truly color separations and all this sort of thing. I love the fact to keep it clean and keep it simple. This idea of red, white, and blue, the three colors of America. Both of these guys opted to just swing for the fences really with their choice of color. It wasn’t about nuance. Although I would say Shepard Fairey had that a little bit with that off-white cream rather than stark white.

I think it was meant to harken back to probably something that Lester Beall would have done. It was aged. Maybe it didn’t look quite so progressive.

It was maybe balancing that out. I wasn’t alive right after World War II, like in the fifties – mid-forties…in the fifties…we think about the atomic age. The whole Leave It To Beaver idea and GI bill and people coming back and settling down. That was a time of great prosperity – obviously for the United States for a lot of people – of course not for everyone, unfortunately. It’s this idea of Back To The Future. It’s sort of nostalgia of that era. If Fairey made it too digital and too cold or too perfect – it probably would be an off note. Wouldn’t have felt authentic or legitimate. I think, of course, the screen printing also adds to that. It was dragged by hand with a squeegee and all these sorts of things. So you do get rough edges.

So Elliot, let me ask you. The Lester Beall posters were obviously successful because I think we have power in Iowa now, right? Do we have power now in Iowa? Can we have somebody check on that?

Unless a tornado is taking it down.

So we have power there in Nebraska. Was Lester Beall sued for any of that work or facing any kind of jail time for anything he had done?

You know Todd, given your line of questioning, the answer is no. I think one of the main reasons is because he was contracted by the government to do it as part of the REA program. So, no, but it sounds to me like perhaps our friend Shepard got into it a little bit of hot water.

The wonderful thing about Shepard is he certainly has been arrested a number of times…14 and counting as part of his activism.

After the election though, a couple of things happened in January of 2009. In the early part of January, the Smithsonian Institute got a copy of one of the originals. He basically did a painting of the poster.

Todd, correct me if I’m wrong, but there’s also a collage in that, right? Aren’t there collage elements? So it’s a little more detailed.

It is. And it’s bigger. And you know, it’s more of a hands-on work of art. Then of course, Obama was inaugurated on the 20th of January. Shortly after that, the Associated Press realized that one of their images was sort of the model for the drawing that Shepard Fairey used. It was revealed that one of their photos – shot by a freelancer named Manny Garcia – was used for Shepard Fairey to draw from.

Now. Elliot. We could disagree on this all day long. No offense to Manny Garcia, he took a fine photograph of then Senator Obama – not even candidate Obama yet. Shot in 2006, sitting next to George Clooney at a Darfur event…

I was excited. I thought you were going to say George Clinton,

No, that would be better. Realistically, anyone who was standing or sitting in his place could have shot the same photo. And again no offense to him, it was a perfectly nice photo. That said, Associated Press said, “Oh, this is famous and you owe us some money for using it.”

What resulted in actually three lawsuits around that one poster…what Shepard Fairey did was he actually sued first for something called a declaratory judgment. That is basically – I’m not a lawyer – but it’s saying you can – as a party involved in a possible legal matter – you can ask the court to conclusively rule on rights or duties or obligations. So basically he said, ‘I want the court to rule that I am using an image in a fair way.’

Yeah. Fair use. Right? As I'm doing this for fair use, it’s out in the public, the world has seen it. This guy – the photographer Manny Garcia – is not going to get any more compensation from this. Right?

And as an artist, I have legal rights to use images.

Obama's a public figure, all these sorts of things.

Right. And even so much that Manny Garcia – the original photographer – said he saw this image. He’s quoted as saying, “You know, I ended up shooting the campaign for months and months and months. Like 20- something months.” And he said, “I would see this artwork and I thought it was great. I would photograph it. I’d photograph the candidates with the artwork and then I thought, what is with this image?” He never realized it was based on one of his photos from 2006.

So was he flattered by the fact that his work was used to?

He loved it. He said, “It never occurred to me it was my picture. It’s a really cool piece of work.” It was Associated Press. Obviously he’s a freelancer and Associated Press has the rights to it. So they’re the ones that were less flattered. The picture was used.

Now again, I don’t agree as an artist and a designer. Shepard Fairey did not use the photograph. He used a model, basically. Again, if you or I were standing in the same place and had an iPhone at the time, we could have created the same image for reference. Manny, I’m sorry. Manny, you are a wonderful, wonderful person.

I’m sure if you’re keeping score, that’s two lawsuits. The parties actually settled out of court a few years later in 2011. The details remain confidential, but they said some legal gobbledygook…like…you know, we were both co-promoting the use of this image and the blah, blah, blah, blah.

Anyway as it turns out even a year later, Shepard Fairey had to plead guilty in New York, federal court for destroying and fabricating documents around that legal battle. When the legal battle was happening, he kind of jumped the gun a little bit and destroyed some of his reference stuff. Then later it came out that it was used and he had to admit that he had destroyed and fabricated some evidence. So he actually pleaded guilty. He was sentenced to two years of probation, 300 hours of community service and a twenty-five thousand dollar fine.

So here’s this artist who didn’t get paid squat to do this poster, right? I mean, I’m sure his reputation is in perfect shape and I’m sure he got a few dollars off of other work too. but he had to plead guilty and do all these other things like community service and pay $25,000.

Wow. Okay. So Todd is Shepard Fairey bitter about any of this? Is he mad at the AP or the photographer? I know we talked a few minutes ago that he feels Obama sort of let him down, but I think that’s more a general record of performance as a politician.

Yeah. The internet is completely vacant on that. Obviously part of their agreement was to not speak of it again. So I will say – and I want to hear more from you on Lester Beall – but I will say he did okay for himself in the end with all of the parodies that were numerous.

The one piece, the signature piece we talked about in the Smithsonian, is that still there? Did that survive the lawsuit?

Oh yeah. I mean the work still stands. They came to an agreement of how they would get credit. So I haven’t seen the artwork in the National Portrait Gallery, but I'm sure it probably says something like, ‘Artist: Shepard, Fairey from a reference given by the Associated Press or something like that.

Yeah. We should look that up.

(Ed. note: We checked the National Portrait Gallery site and they have both an original painting and a copy of the screen print. Interestingly, the painting Fairey contributed carries the credit “Artist: Shepard Fairey. Copy after: Manny Garcia” yet the screen print does not mention Garcia.)

Yeah. A tad more controversial than bringing electricity to the fly-over parts of the United States.

You know you’re from one of the fly over States, Elliot. You can’t say that.

You’re right. I don’t say that with any sort of judgment. I stated this simple fact. It would be one thing if this lawsuit happened and then all the work that Shepard Fairey did had to be destroyed.

I think as we reflect back on the Lester Beall poster – 85 years out – I’m very curious about 85 years from 2008. When our kids…grandkids will be in Washington, D.C. looking at this Shepard Fairey poster. What are they going to think about it? Because in my opinion, lawsuit, schmall-suit, that’ll be gone. No one will remember that. If this artwork can still stand, in a weird way I think that almost bolsters Shepherd Fairey’s rebellious resume.

I think it’s – he came out of the skate, graffiti street culture that we both know and love – and I think to have a backstory of something in the Smithsonian that didn't have something cool like that as part of it…I think would be a bummer and almost be a disservice.

Yeah Elliot. Think about when you started this conversation by saying you were turned on to Lester Beall’s posters while in design school. Few things kind of stop you in your tracks and I’m sure when you were first exposed to it they didn’t tell you the entire story about such a small percentage of people having electricity. The same with Shepherd Fairey’s work. You think about it now, he is a street artist. He’s known for his activism. He’s been arrested 14 times. And now he has a historical piece of work in the National Portrait Gallery. So he will go on to inspire a group of currently disenfranchised design students that didn't really know how they could put their voice to work. Maybe encourage them to do something with their talent. And that just grows his credibility and his audience.

Well I think again posters as a vehicle for movements…I mean…there’ve been so many political posters over the years.

Definitely whether it be civil rights, abortion rights, political movements, like certain candidates or certain types of government or all of these different things throughout the world. When you see protests, there’s always people holding up posters, everything from the total vernacular – made it at home with magic markers and poster board – all the way up to something much more slickly produced like the Shepard Fairey poster.

Even today in the age of all these digital tools that we have, there’s still something about a poster. I love the fact that long after the iPads we’re looking at…the zeros and ones that are out of these different screens…are dead and buried, paper and ink is a pretty killer app. And the scale of a poster like a half size or full-size broadsheet is pretty incredible. I mean, even today when you walk into a movie theater and you go into the lobby, they still have posters there.

You know, they certainly have much larger, more elaborate displays, but every single movie that gets released still has a poster. And that’s pretty cool. You think about Saul Bass and Hitchcock and all the posters that he made and all these sorts of things. I mean, we could go on…we could have a whole podcast series about nothing but posters.

Oh my God. Yeah. I love ‘em. And you know, what I love about them is the psychology of how you read a poster. You have to see it from 50-feet away and it has to convey something enough to trigger your brain to go closer. And then it has to give you more information when you’re 10-feet away that says, “Okay, I’m rewarded for walking that distance. Now this is what I thought it would be. And it has tickled my brain enough that I want to go up and I want to read the small type now.” love that part. And

I’ve designed plenty of posters, Elliot. And I know you have to, and I’m going to plug you and say, I believe you have one in the Library of Congress as well. Which I don’t, but I’m going to say the philosophy of that poster design is really beneficial for me as a designer to think about how people interact. They don’t give you a hot minute to start with. You have to bring them in and then you have to continue feeding them as you get them closer and closer.

Well, it goes back to why I asked about whether or not the poster in the Smithsonian was the one with a collage with the detail. Because I think you’re exactly right in that from across the gallery you’d look at that and say, “Wow, that’s a pretty amazing. Cool. Interesting portrait.” But then when you get up within a couple feet of it, you’re like, “Wow. Okay. There’s all this subtle subtext to it that I wouldn’t have seen from across the room. That’s true with just so many posters that I love.

Like I said earlier we could sit here the rest of the day…like all the Hatch Show Print test sheets when they’re inking up the press and make-ready sheets and just all the color overlapping and the different orientations of the woodcuts and everything.

We got to do a letter press podcast like this. Cause that’ s awesome.

I’m really at a loss for words, and you’re probably loving that…

Never heard that in my life.

It just shows the impact and the value. And at least for me, the reverence I have for that specific medium in graphic design.

I’m a poster collector and you’re a poster collector too, Elliot. Right?

Yes.

You have quite a few vintage posters. Do you happen to have copies of these Lester Beall poster?

I do not. I would say the closest thing that I have that is Lester Beall-like – a more contemporary version would be the Michael Schwab Golden Gate Parks poster series. I have some Michael Schwab posters, not from that series, but I love. Again, maybe we can do a future episode on Michael Schwab and his poster art. I love the fact that he was commissioned to do a series for each of the parks. In the Golden Gate Parks collection to get people in the Bay area and outside of it who are visiting to come enjoy some of the more offbeat things in and around San Francisco. I love that.

That’s a really good tie-in to what we’ve been talking about today, which is using your design skills and in particular, your poster design skills for civic pride, for a movement of some kind to get people informed in some way, which I think is fantastic.

Absolutely, Todd. I don’t know. I think we’ve, if you asked me, I think we've done a pretty good job covering our topic today. Like I said earlier I just love the fact that you chose the Shepard Fairey poster. I believe that sort of takes the groundwork that Lester Beall and others, started to lay. Again, it just talks about one of these core mantras that we always have – where every designer is always standing on the shoulders of designers who came before them. I think we’re very lucky that we’re able to work in a profession where there’s a very obvious way to connect the dots and have this continuum and be able to sort of do these archeological digs and say, “Oh, this thing that was done a year ago reminds me of this other thing done 10-years ago, reminds me of this other thing done 50-years ago.” They say, what is it? “There’s not any new ideas, only new interpretations of old ideas.” I’m fine with that. I think if you can add your own flavor to something and update it, but it’s sort of in the cannon of what’s been going on in design – for now the better part of 150 years.

I’m sure Lester Beall heard that in the thirties and we’re not looking at a complete linear timeline of the history of design. When you look at things like that – we’re looking at a guy who took a pretty major, bold step forward in poster design using a combination of photography and bold graphics to sell something to people who…basically he was bringing fire to the caveman at the time.

They didn’t need it.

They didn’t know they needed it.

Yes. That’s a better way to phrase that.

So yeah Elliot, we’re always looking at better ways to get a point across. Maybe there aren’t any new ideas. I don’t know when the ideas ran out, but I’m all for continuing to explore the ideas.

Well Todd, there’s another famous Lester Beall poster from the series that has a giant faucet and it has arrows going into the faucet and the arrows coming out of the faucet. Maybe next time if we do that poster, that can be the idea faucet and we’ll turn on and then a bunch of new ideas will flow out. Man…Todd thanks so much for bringing the Shepard Fairey poster into our conversation today. I really enjoyed learning so much about it.

Same here man. I really loved learning more about that time period in design and have always known about Lester Beall, but you brought a lot more color today. And for those of you out there join us next time around our virtual pub table. As we talk about more design geek stuff.

But use a coaster, please.

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Are we done? We’re done.

Check out more episodes.

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