The Graphic Process (1972)

[Music] start with L Herrero a graphic designer and painter add the fact that he's a sportsnut with a great deal of success as a designer deser of calendars and what you come up with is obvious a sports calendar better yet a combination of schedule and calendar something with graphic Unity schedules are so darn hard to read these little pocket size things you know so I thought that if a person had a decorative type schedule he'd want to hang on the wall and uh that way he'd know where his team was who they were playing when and so on so forth and it also would become a decorative item after I had gotten it worked out when I thought gee wouldn't it be great to be able to keep scores so that even made it doubly valuable to to you know to keep so he started into it he discussed it with anyone who'd listen his wife friends everybody thought it was a great idea especially the part about having a place to write in the scores that seemed to pull the whole thing together so he started into layouts sketches and roughs and began to show these around and that's where he had a little trouble I had few problems mainly I CU I didn't have the contacts who who do you go to you know when you have something like this which is you know you can have a wh beat of a product but if doesn't get the exposure or the right context it'll just die like anything else I don't care how good it is it has to have the exposure I I don't have the time I had to do all this on the side as well as my regular work I have my regular work which is advertising Commercial Art so many things to be done with So Little Time sponsors Distributors contacts knocking on doors it's frustrating and finally the project got set aside it just gathered us for all this time until uh I met this Attorney John mcguin is his name through a mutual friend of ours our mutual friend had told John about this calendar and he said gez I'd like to see it and uh with that he came over the studio and saw it and so what he like he says geezus says uh have you tried to sell us and I said well not really I've shown it to a lot of people and nothing happened so he said you mind if I take it so he uh I said no go ahead be my guest so he took the calar and uh started making the rounds of various clients sponsors possible sponsors and uh uh got a lot of good reaction quite a few of them expressed interest in it so uh with a combination of John and myself me creating producing and John selling was was great and that's really the way it all started we formed a company and we call ourselves sports calendar company which is aopo that the background what it took to get the project off the ground now let's look at how the schedule calendar was developed into the finished product start with the concept and I just felt right from the very beginning there wasn't a question in my mind that it should be Nostalgia that struck me as being apple pie uh you know Flags cross bats Eagles a Nostalgia thing and uh it just lend itself to it I was searching in my own mind for a format a good workable format I had to simplify that whole thing and that's when I came up with the baseballs round circles I completed a page of white circles just very rough form and sure enough uh it worked once once I establish a you know the concept that I think that I will work then I carried a step further I get into more detail once I had start established the concept and had worked out all the little details then it was a matter of how many pages we going to use I had worked uh worked it out where we could get all this on three sheets of paper and uh then I proceeded to make a mockup an actual dummy and I really have to work out every detail because I want to see if it's going to work or not I want to see it all worked out and I have to do it by hand when LEL is satisfied with the design and layout John mcgwin uses the mockup to tie down the details of sales distribution licensing and contracts and then the mechanical drawings are started for this phase of the work L and John obtain the services of Debbie Bristo a graphics artist and a skilled professional using the mockup as a the guide Debbie obtains the type proofs required for the paste UPS of team logos symbols numbers and other special items this work is carefully checked against the mockup and sketches for size and design and is coordinated with LEL who at this time is beginning his paintings because of a special antiquing process to be used he will do the paintings on rusty metal it's a different sensation uh working on that surface I've worked on a lot of things I all kinds of surfaces Uh Wood glass metal canvas illustration board it's so much fun to paint on it really is it uh it covers uh a multiple of sins you can get away with a lot you throw caution to the wind you know I mean you could just paint loose and uh feel good and relaxed and uh if you do make a mistake you can cover it up very easily on the midal once once I've traced it down I uh then I begin to paint when I do apply the paint to the metal I paint as bright as I can get it and uh I usually paint in layers the reason for doing that is so that when we do antique it a lot of the paint will start to peel away and then you get the under painting de Debbie now starts the artwork for the various emblems logos numbers and other items which she will need for her mechanical drawings and paste UPS the type setting work is cut and respaced to match the emblems of each of the teams appearing on the calendar to ensure a perfect match of the emblems she works from photographs and other information supplied to her by the individual teams working through a series of negative and positive phot stats Debbie adds the special Line work required and realigns the lettering this process is continued until she arrives at an exact duplicate of the team emblems reduced to the size required for her paste UPS these are set aside for future use her job requires long hours of delicate and detailed work as she must not only do the team emblems but must make ready for paste up the numbers symbols and printed information which will appear on the finished schedule calendar this results in a mountain of negatives positives enlargements and reductions people have asked me what what sort of paint do you use because of the uh the abuse that it takes you know it's just nothing but acrylic paint which is a plastic paint and I find it that stuff is so amazing you could just it takes an awful beating and uh I've been asked the question well does it uh do you do you use a primer before you apply the the final coat no just paint right on Raw metal and that just amazes a lot of my contemporaries they can't believe it you're kidding oh try it you'll like it by now Debbie and L are deeply into their work [Music] as the work goes on John and lo will review the progress as both Printing and sales must be closely coordinated with the completion of the art Debbie too meets with LOL the progress of her work is reviewed and any questions she may have about the layouts are discussed in detail since the calendar features the schedule of the San Francisco Giants LEL and John request a review of the schedule by a member of the Giants organization and the Giants are extremely Cooperative in providing the up-to-date schedules and checking the accuracy of the work now it's just a matter of long hard work until Debbie has completed her pay ups and lel's paintings are ready for antiquing [Music] Debbie when through will have prepared one mean meical drawing for each of the pages of the calendar these mechanical drawings will be used by the printer to prepare his printing plates L meanwhile has reached the stage where the paintings are ready for the antiquing process he's painted brightly and in layers resulting in a flat poster-like look soon to be completely changed the antiquing is extremely risky as the results are purely accidental and completely without control the fear exists that the paintings will be destroyed and will have to be redone but what can result makes the gamble worth taking so L gathers up the paintings and takes them to the studio of sculpter Tom Brown where under L supervision the antiquing begins the first thing is to burn the top layer of pigment by using a relatively cold torch next the pigment is further broken down by rubbing on liquid sulfur diluted with water as the Heat and the sulfur react differently with each of the various colors the painting begins to lose its uniform appearance as more sulfur is added a hot torch is used to eat into the paint layers to different levels sometimes going all the way to the bare rusty metal there's one thing about this technique the first time we experimented with it uh it it really shook me up when you think about the hours that you've spent painting this particular painting and you take it out to Tom Brown here and he uh fir up his torch and within a minute can destroy the whole thing right before your very eyes the painting is now worked over by hand with various materials sandpaper steel wool hammers whatever is needed to gain the desired effects I more or less guide them along and point out the various areas that I want to see pitted more I try to guide him into uh giving it an old overall feeling to it and then I try to pick out certain areas that I'd like to see destroyed so to speak the torch is used again this time to highlight certain areas and to achieve a uniform appearance he dries it off and then he applies a fixative to preserve what paint is left now he just keeps working over all of them to do it all at once so we can keep that same consistency going I mean to do one one week and do another one the next week you forget some of the little things that you applied to the first one and vice versa so it's better to do them all at once that way you're more consistent they work until all of the paintings have been antiqued a comparison with their appearance before the antiquing shows how much they've been changed we arrived at a point where we figured well that's enough and uh before I begin to touch it up so then it's back to the studio and uh reworking it all over again it's almost like taking a photograph and retouching it this is what it all boils down to [Music] the paintings are now completed and ready for the pr enter again so we can appreciate what's been done let's look at some of these before antiquing after antiquing and after Low's retouching before antiquing after antiquing and after retouching before the printing can be started there are two items left to be done in Debbie's case she uh has some overlays to do uh which is the uh the imprint of the word Giants there I might point out too that the the word Giants uh I had that lettered by a specialist who was a very good lettering man name of Chuck wman and he lettered it in such a way that it would fit the curvature of the baseball on the cover which is pretty hard to duplicate if you were to have it set in tight it's almost impossible so Chuck actually designed it to fit the curvature of the the ball itself on the cover this is just sort of a guideline for the printer so he will know where the type and the U well all the type in the cover will be placed it's just a guide for him there wasn't any uh National League logo uh to my knowledge so I decided to create one really for for the reason that it would be a nice added addition to the rest of it which has the old look to get a clear sharp reproduction of this logo LEL has the Blackline drawing reproduced on film the color work is then done separately under this film an illustration board so that when he is through he has the color on the board and the line work on the film these are handled separately by the printer now the next step was to select the color now if you can recall the Mechanicals are all black and white all the emblems the logos and uh things of that nature so what we had to do was color key this and by color keying I mean we have a chart a color chart which is coded in numbers and that's the way the whole process was done on an overlay indicating this by numbers what color was to go in this designated area now the printing can begin the first step is the making of the printing plates The Originals of the colored artwork are shot by a special camera through various colored filters mechanical drawings and other black and white work are shot through a special Amber or combination filter when this is done there will be one negative for each of the separated colors one for the separated Blues one for the separated Reds one for the yellows and one for the blacks before these negatives are used to engrave the printing plates they are carefully inspected and are retouched by hand to ensure an exact match to the original artwork the plates are engraved and set into the press in this order black blue or cyan red or magenta and yellow the colors are imprinted onto the paper the white paper is first printed black then the blue is added then the red and then the yellow black black blue black blue red black blue red yellow the printing is now started [Music] [Music] as the printing is done proofs are constantly pulled by the pressmen these proofs are checked for proper density of colors registration and quality everyone gets into the act as the highest quality must be obtained [Music] it was beautiful beautiful to see because they came so close to the original it wasn't funny it was just beautiful and that's that's what you anticipate that's what you look forward to and that's what it's all about so after checking it over very carefully I put my approval on it and I okay that press sheet and what that means is the rest of the 50,000 calendars have to come up to that sheet that I have approved when enough copies have been printed The Binding can be started the pages are first cut to sides they are then scored for folding next they are machine folded and finally they are placed in a machine which collates the pages binds them with staples and trims them to finished size they are then packed into boxes the calendar is shipped to the various distribution outlets and is also sold at the Ballpark the Giants Candlestick Park to launch this momentous occasion we had selected the San Francisco Boys Club to introduce the calendar of the public wow at times you began to or I did wonder whe it was worth it all would it ever become a realization in you know here you have a finished product it's being sold it's printed people are buying it you know it's pretty damn rewarding when you know that you've created something and uh it it was nice enough or at least the public thinks it's nice enough to want to buy it I can hardly wait to start next year's oh the lineup for the Giants calendar was as follows Mo Herrero and artist John mcguin at business partner Debbie Bristo at mechanical drawings Chuck Workman at special lettering Tom Brown at sculptor and antiquing Omnicom at typ setting Peninsula lithography at Printing and binding John tedi at Giants representative the San Francisco boys club at sales and Renee mcnn at narrator produced and distributed by films m [Applause]