Going Public By Accident

Illustration for CFO Magazine an unsuspecting business caught up in the spot light. Naturally © Bill Mayer 2011 Just finished this little illustration for CFO Magazine. used to a buch of stuff for CFO but hadn't heard for them in a while. As the story explains, even though a company is private it can still have shares of stock, and therefore shareholders. If the number of shareholders rises above 500, the company has to file certain reports with the SEC, even though it may not be a true public company (i.e., traded on a stock exchange). Many CFOs may not fully realize this, or keep track of it, and therefore risk getting whacked with fines. So this article warns them and tells them how to make sure they don't cross the line. So we need some sort of visual metaphor that gets at this idea that once your stock is in the hands of more than 500 people, you have to comply with certain reporting requirements. Therefore you need to keep an eye on your expanding stock-holding population. It's really more of a compliance issue, in the sense that this can sneak up on you. As the story says, you may, for example, grant stock to employees, who then may turn around and sell it or share it in some way that expands your total number of shareholders, without you realizing it. Yes, the idea that you are suddenly and unwittingly "in the public eye" a la paparazzi might be a good way to go, fun and dramatic, the innocent CFO who thought he was anonymous is suddenly a public figure, and is unprepared for that role. I like it. Robert's original concept was to have the building getting out of the car, caught by Paparazzi...I sent these and the next day I had a different idea. I had another idea I thought of making the building into a business man but the editor thought it muddied the concept....but Robert did like the idea of having the building surrounded by the paparazzi... a little comp I did to try to sell the idea of the spotlight.... He liked the idea but wanted to see a more small commercial building to indicate small to medium size companies... The two versions I comped up one of the spotlight one with the paparazzi... I ended up doing several versions with and without the Papparazi... And in the end they sort of compromised to simplify and have the Paparazzi at the bottom. Robert Lesser's brilliant page design...© Bill Mayer 2011

"Ten Things You Keep Doing Wrong" or "Wrong Headed"

I was pretty thrilled to get a call from SooJin Bizelli I had been seeing her name on every award I had run across recently. She is so smart and such a good designer. My intern Sojung told me how famous this art director was, She said "Oooo SooJin, she's really famous..." This is not a great way to start on a job, feeling really nervous about doing a good enough job, But SooJin is so easy and so good at direction it made it a pleasure to work through. She tells me that the last piece was one James Yang did and it ended up on the cover of 3x3, now I am panicking....she asks for at least three ideas. Once I got started everthing flowed like normal, I sent her thirty-four thumbnails . Looking back on these little sketches, there is some pretty fun stuff in here. I know such a cliché ,but I just couldn't resist... I have bee trying to figure out where these ideas come from. Seems more like a stream of consciousness, some make sense and some are well , where did that come from... there were two ideas she liked the screaming face and the bumps on the head.....sketched them both up so she could decide... Here's the sketch.... In one version I tried adding numbers to reinforce the "Ten things you keep doing wrong" I so enjoyed this job ,it was fun and the image ,even though I really wanted to do somthing stronger for her, it still turned out well and got in 3x3,SILA and SINY. now she tells me " good friend (freelancer) Maynard Kay did that layout. ? So Big thanks to Maynard, Great job, I had the pleasure of finally meeting SooJin in Atalnta at SCAD reciently , the first thing she did was remind me that I had turned her down on a job she called me about back in the mid nineties, Yikes, these stories keep following me around.... Anyway this was a ton of fun.

Spot for Piaui

Here's a little spot illustration I just did for Piuai magazine.had just emailed Cecelia about two pieces I did for her getting into SI west 49, and she said " It is a huge coincidence to find your email today: on our next issue we will have story that I think that you could enjoy. It is about the Versailles hotel it's an article about how they are opening the Versailles to tourist." We thought that a fun illustration would show a group of tourists checking-in wearing the usual tourist uniform (flip flops, shorts, t-shirts etc) but also huge Louis XV wigs instead of baseball caps or straw hats.The hotel lounge should resemble Versailles Hall of Mirrors, obviously.... My second thought was to make the tourist look like Berlusconi and one of his very young pornodiva!!!!... She was totally into this but the time crunch and I sort of dropped the ball on that. But a funny thought anyway...To read more about how you can be Queen for a day... Thumbnails to tease the art director into doing the illustration...© Bill Mayer 2011 Here's the sketch, I did the hall of mirrors separate from the couple, really because of trying to get the simple perspective right ... here's the layout © Bill Mayer 2011

Cover for Piaui on Floods In Brazil

I talked with Cecila about this problem... It's because of the developement and little regulation of hardscape and water runoff. There are people getting caught in their car just commuting to work. Over 600 hundred people have drowned in the floods. This is what she wrote me... "I fell in love with one of your works because it just expresses our collective feeling when we hear the news with all those deaths from floods, rain, landslides. And also that the rains will not stop any time soon... I would like to suggest it the editor as our february cover, We are really terrified with the summer rains. Some people are dying inside their cars in S Paulo's usual traffic jams and here in Rio due to mud slides. The worst is that heavy summer rains are natural, not a surprise. But the cities are growing too much and too fast and either people construct in places that are dangerous or just construct too much leaving insufficient garden areas to absorb the water... It is a sad situation because people will die again next year." Maria Cecliia Marr From BBC: "Rio de Janeiro Governor Sergio Cabral blamed local governments for allowing poor building and illegal occupations." read more on the story... original image: was distorted to better fit the cover space. © Bill Mayer 2011