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Today I want to share a bit of my creative past with you. When I was about 19, in addition to doing my community college studies concentrating in both film and philosophy, I also had the opportunity to do an informal apprenticeship studying commercial design for advertising with one of the guys the series Mad Men was actually about. No joking!
My Teacher. Ron Travisano, enjoying Ice cream in Bloomfield NJ in a YouTube video.
-So as the story goes, one Sunday after Church my very Italian, very tech-savvy Grandmother had been showing some of my designs to the other folks in her Church group, one of them being Mr. Travisano. She mentioned all of the creative things I was getting into at the time, (advertising being a big growing interest for me back then) and I’m sure less based on my creative skills, and more as a favor to Grandma, (you know how Italians are) he gave her my email to pass over to me, in case I had any questions about the industry.
In 1966 Ron was mentioned on the front page of the Wall Street Newspaper as one of the "Rich Kids" making it big in the Advertising World. In 1967 along with Jerry DellaFemina, Ron started his own agency which became one of the best known creative agencies for the next 18 years.
Travisano created the singing cat commercial in 1979 with his firm, Della Femina Travisano & Partners, for Ralston Purina. When Meow Mix announced plans in 2002 to bring back the ad campaign, The New York Times called the tune “one of the best known, most readily sung commercial jingles.”
After a quick introduction email, he explained that he was teaching Advertising Design at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, and if I was up for it, he could send me the same assignments his students got, which he would review and give me feedback on for practice.
I was thrilled.
Ron's profile photo on his instructor bio for the Pratt Institute Brooklyn NY
Of course I accepted the offer, and for the course of that semester, I did all of the assignments his 50k a year Advertising & Design Concept students did. I delivered my assignments all through email and we’d have a short phone call once a week for him to explain the next assignment to me and ask if I had any questions.
And that’s how it went- for an entire semester. Looking back, I still have all our emails and most of the projects I had done for the class.
This Ben & Jerry’s assignment was one of my favorites…
"Peace Love & Rocky Road"
"All you need is Fudge."
"Cone Ya Dig It?"
And here was his feedback..
looking back I totally agree. Bad type choice Dayle. This was clearly before I knew the wonders of dafont.com
One of my favorite things he ever told me about good design was that it was like slowly bringing two live wires closer to each other...
"You want them to be just close enough that a spark can jump between them. Don’t spoon feed the reader, but don’t be so abstract that no one will get it either. You want that perfect balance where they can connect the dots.“
1986, Under Travisano's direction, the television campaign for Japanese car manufacturer Isuzu won 15 Clio awards and was one of the most-talked-about campaigns of the 1980s.
Here's another assignment I did for mock client, Pepto Bismol
And the feedback I received.
Talk about some serious Jedi design training. Sensing weakness in me! I will say, as nice as he was, he NEVER minced words. If he thought something I did was bad, he let me know with a kind but definite "try again".
The semester ended and I thanked him very much for his time and he offered his time to critique anything else I was working on. Shortly after his wife passed away and we lost touch, but I would always send my hello's with Grandma.
It's a time in my life where so many other kinda crappy things were going on, that I often forget about it, but I'm so thankful for the time he spent, even if it was just an Italian-respect courtesy to my Nonna.
Come to think of it, reading his critiques, it's probably why I'm so obsessed with using the right type to this day!
I hope you enjoyed this little time machine post!
Until next time friends!
<3
Dayleeo
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