October 30, 2003
Fighting several fires. Big territorial dispute in ad department. I am so thankful I have Bob Brink and R.G. on my team. Both are tough and Bob is especially talented at being firm and decisive. I told Kathy last night I would still be at the office trying to calm everyone down. Ha. Artists have a tough time being firm (our greatest strength is to see all sides and our greatest weakness is to see all sides). The only artist exception I can think of is Hitler but he was a pretty lousy watercolorist. and he lost his gallery and the war. They did have some cool graphics though.

Came home for lunch and tried to get going on Women of the West logo. Didn’t get far. On Tuesday night I went to Tower Records and bought the new Strokes CD ($13) and two exotic magazines, Black & White and Zoom.

Today there are 17,000 magazine titles! I have been using the figure 5,000 but according to the new issue of Folio the number is 17K. And the magazine racks (4) at Tower were bristling with the proof. I counted seven basketball titles. This doesn’t count Sports Illustrated or Sporting News (which had basketball coverage). There is even a magazine called, and I’m not making this up, Another Magazine. That we are even on the radar is nothing short of amazing.

After Tower I went over to Barnes & Noble and bought a big ol’ graphics book on the best ads from the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s. I paid way too much for it ($75, but I got them to knock off 10% for the dinged cover, and I shouldn’t have even been looking at books, but I was half drunk from two margaritas at El Conquistador). I came home with some great reference and inspiration for the logo. Took the book in yesterday and gave it to Abby and the production staff to get inspired by.

Traded out Davy Crockett for Zip Wyatt in Classic Gunfights. Fortunately it was already written. Need to knock out some Oklahoma badmen art for that.

Got home around six, picked around, looked at magazines and got to bed around nine.

Got inspired to do more stark covers. The skeleton Billy the Kid was a very successful cover. Need to emulate that kind of cover more. It’s simple and clean next to the thousands of colorful, jammed pack cleavage covers I saw at Tower.

”It takes a long time to learn simplicity.”
—Louis Malle