Yesterday, Pete Kimack dropped by, as he does occasionally.
There he is, on an earlier visit, meeting Steve Karbo (New Bohemia's founder) and showing the inspiration for a painting he was working on at the time. Yesterday, he was on his way to ePress Books, across the street, to check on a re-print of his 2nd volume of Lines Unlimited: A Coloring Book for All Ages. He brought along Roger, owner of Universal Signs, for whom (and for whose father) he used to work, on occasion.
I tried to get some handle on the layout of the billboard biz, from Roger, but didn't get the chance to conduct any sort of lengthy interview. He says he occasionally gets to paint a billboard, but that only comes up rarely anymore. They don't even print the billboards at Universal: they just hang 'em. The client (say, Nike), might contact the billboard owner (say, CBS Outdoor Media), who might hook them up with a printer, and then Universal would be subcontracted to hang the art the printer produces. Roger says that even when they were doing a lot of billboard painting, in the past, it was never the case that billboard painters were ever tasked with designing the things.
I guess that's kinda the same way it's working out in NYC with Colossal Media. I mean, I dunno, except for in that Dewar's campaign, wherein, I guess, the designs came from Shepard Fairey.
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Anyhoo, we also had a visit, last Friday afternoon, from Annica Lyndenburg, the skills behind Dirty Bandits, a NY-based design and illustration biz. We immediately hit her up for a set of her pick-up line business cards:
She was also kind enough to leave us a few ex-boyfriend postcards, which we are encouraged to re-gift to some less-agreeable ex-clients... (resisting urge to embed hyperlink here). She says she might like to get away from New York on occasion, and take a holiday huffing 1Shot fumes. I think we can accommodate.