We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Mark Bunger a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Mark thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Before we get into specifics, let’s talk about success more generally. What do you think it takes to be successful?
Success in our business is a matter of solving problems for our clients. We have 2 businesses, one is providing consumer packaging prototypes to CPG companies and the other is copying and printing fine art for artists. For both of these client groups people come to us with a project or part of a project that they cannot execute or complete themselves. We review the project, discuss the best solution and solve the problem. If we do it right = success!
Some time ago one of our clients that was working on a project for Clairol came to me and asked me to print and then scan some advertising concepts to show to her client. I found out that what the client really needed was digital images that they could put in Power Point to share with other people in remote locations. I suggested that we simply create the concepts in the computer and I made a link that we sent to the client. The client was able to download the concepts in a form that they could easily place in their Power Point presentation. The client was very happy that I had made their jobs easy. Word spread that we knew how to make things work smoothly and this was the beginning of a 10 year relationship with Clairol and later Wella.
Even though the job my client originally showed up with was a small seemingly insignificant job, taking the time to
understand the clients needs and supply an appropriate solution turned into a very profitable long term relationship.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
My father was a commercial artist, now days know as a graphic designer. He worked for Post cereal in Battle Creek, Michigan designing product packaging. In 1962 he was transferred to the east coast headquarters of General Foods in White Plains NY and we settled in Weston CT. After several years at General Foods he left and started his own freelance design business. In May of 1969, my senior year in high school, I left school unannounced and with 3 friends drove to the west coast, ending up in Berkeley CA. After a couple of months immersed in the hippie culture of the time we returned to CT broke and with no prospects. I contemplated a return to school but ended up getting a job at a local toy store instead.
Working in retail at the toy store I learned how important it is to establish a friendly rapport with the customer. The owner of the store and his employees were very comfortable dealing with customers and I loved watching them. I enjoyed very much interacting with the customers and difficult customers became a specialty of mine. This would be a skill that turned out to be indispensable later.
Although I loved working at the toy store the pay was minimal and after a few years I started looking for a job with better pay. One day while visiting my dad at his studio, he showed me a Vaseline Intensive Care hand cream bottle that was a prototype for a TV commercial. It was a solid bottle painted to look like the real thing with a special silk screen printed label applied. He told me “I just paid $1800 for this bottle, if you could learn how to do this you could probably make some money at it.” I thought about it for a couple of weeks and decided to give it a try.
In 1972 I went to work for my dad doing his darkroom work, pasting up art for packaging (called “mechanicals”) and reading about how to make screens and screen print. I had a little knowledge of the screen printing process as my dad used to print Christmas cards at home every year. Mostly this had taught me how to say “bad” words but I had seen the process and that was a great help in getting started. Half of the screen printing process takes place in the darkroom and there was a very basic darkroom already set up at the studio. I read books and subscribed to Screen Printing Magazine which I read cover to cover every month.
Little by little I learned how to make film, make screens, mix color and print. I needed a point light source rich in UV and a vacuum frame in order make the stencils for the screens. We didn’t really have space for either one in the studio and they were quite expensive so I used the best free, point light source I could find, the sun. I would sandwich the film and the stencil material with a stiff wood backing and some foam, walk to the window, stick the “sandwich” out the window, count to 20 and go to the sink to finish processing the screen. Later once I started to actually make packaging prototypes for Cheseborourgh Ponds they used to joke “we better get our orders in while the sun is shining!”
My dad had several artists working for him and they were all very helpful when it came to learning how to mix colors. I wasted a lot of ink but eventually, once I got a set of the right base colors I was able to match any color used in packaging production.
A couple of years after I started to make and sell prototypes or “comps” as they are know in the business, I had a chance to attend RIT in Rochester, NY on an audit basis. A good friend (one of the guys that had taken the California trip) was attending RIT full time and had invited me to stay in his apartment and take a summer course in darkroom technique. Up to this point I had taught myself how to do the bare minimum to get the result I was after. At RIT I learned in depth how film, chemistry and light worked together to get predictable results on film. Some of the things I learned at RIT that summer I still refer to today almost 50 years later.
Soon my dad moved his office to a new location and I was able to set up a proper darkroom and screen exposure unit, built my own screen printing table with a vacuum to hold paper down and a micro adjustment for color registration. Over the next several years I honed my craft. I made tons of mistakes and each time I made a mistake I learned more. Up until now all of my comps were made for my dads clients, Chesebrough and General Foods at the time. Friends I had met in the business had made me aware of a new design group that had moved in the area. I contacted them and after a meeting I began to make comps for them as well. Since I was billing separately from my dad’s business I came up with a name for myself “Image Works” and my own business was born. Word spread and I was very busy.
In 1991 my father passed away suddenly and I went into business with my friend Don from the California trip and RIT. Don had been involved in a business in NYC at the time that used a patented process to photograph flat art to make 8×10 transparencies that could be wrapped on a drum and scanned for reproduction in print. Don had also spent many years in the printing business and together we both had an in depth understanding of the print business.
We were very busy making comps for almost a year and had set aside money to buy a screen printing press. I went to a client to pick up a job and rather than a typical paper mechanical containing the art I was handed a floppy disk. When I got back we sent the disk to several different places to get film separations made so we could make the screens needed to produce the comps. We quickly found out that no one in our area that had the ability to output film understood how to make separations for printing. We took the money we had ear marked for a screen printing press and used it to buy a Mac computer and an Agfa imagesetter with a used film processor. I spent the next 2 years learning how to use the computer and make film with an imagesetter. There was no shortage of books on how to use the computer. I bought a half dozen books and put them all in a box, none of them were helpful. I took a page from my dad’s book many years earlier and after using a lot of “bad” words I learned how to use the computer to properly prepare art and make the separations needed to make the film necessary to make screens for printing comps.
After we became computer literate we entered into the digital printing business which eventually supplanted screen printing almost entirely. Now that we had the ability to output in full color on a variety of papers we decided to add the ability to capture color images as well. We purchased a high end drum scanner and started to scan art and make prints. Don was able to bring in art reproduction clients from his connections in NYC. Eventually we bought a large flatbed Cruse Synchron scanner that gave us the ability to scan large original art and make facsimile reproductions.
We use our knowledge of image capture and print production built over years of experience to make both packaging prototypes for CPG companies and reproduce fine art for personal use. In all cases we make the clients needs and satisfaction our top priority. We never release a job unless it is absolutely the best we can make it. The respect for the client I learned working at the toy store has been indispensable in dealing with corporate clients. Personal relationships are the backbone of our business. Our ability to problem solve on the fly, developed from my seat of the pants start in the business is a must in our business. Almost every job we receive is a unique puzzle that needs to be solved quickly and on a strict schedule.
We work extensively with advertising groups and yet we don’t advertise. We are a small group with unique skills and all of or clients come to us by word of mouth. I have been in business 51 years and still enjoy the problem solving. I love a good puzzle and our clients provide us plenty.
Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?
Your question concerns what insight “creatives” can share with “non-creatives”. As someone who has spent the last 50 years in the creative services business I would like to address those that think they are non-creative but are good with their hands. We host an intern from the local high school every year for several weeks at the end of the school year. The students are allowed to select where they want to intern and being in the arts we often have a number of students that select us and we have to pick one. I am surprised at how many of the students we have hosted over the years are not good with their hands.
Several years ago I asked a student to draw and then cut a 8” circle out of a piece of paper. I showed them a table with a cutting mat and all of the tools necessary to complete the task and walked away. After about 30 minutes I went back to check on them and was surprised by the trail of destruction and lack of an 8” paper circle. This was a student that had taken all of the graphic courses at school and had gotten good marks but apparently they had never been asked to use their hands. When I showed them how to use the compass to draw the circle and carefully use an exacto knife to cut it out they were amazed. Apparently schools, the local high school anyhow, does not encourage students to use their hands at all anymore.
I guess my point, or my message to those who like to create is, use your hands. We all use computers in our business but we use our hands too. People in business that can use their hands and are good at making things are invaluable. I encourage every student I encounter that has natural ability with their hands to realize how important it is to be competent at creating things with your hands. As important as business planning and management is, if there is nobody making the widgets, there is no business and nothing to manage. Not everyone has the natural ability to create with their hands. If you are good with your hands realize how special it is and use that ability to its fullest.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
I learned the graphics business, package design and prototype production from my father, who was a package designer. I learned everything by hand using the simplest tools that everyone else in the studio used. Aside from a “stat” camera the most expensive piece of equipment in the studio was the big paper cutter. In the early 90’s computers replaced drawing boards, and it happened very quickly. Within about 3 years it went from no computers to 95% of the graphics being done on computers. My partner and I had to transition very quickly from 0% digital to 95% digital and it was expensive. We went from a studio that had about $10,000 total in equipment to a studio that had about $150,000 in computer equipment literarily over night. But the biggest expense was the time it took to figure out how to best use this new equipment to complete the tasks that we knew so well how to do by hand.
At the time the people writing the software that we all used were very young, competent computer programmers who had no idea how the graphics business operated. We were using the software to prepare art for printing, but the people writing the software didn’t know the difference between a printing press and a Buick! I exaggerate a little but not much. It was like the wild west. There were several software companies competing for market share and they all had slightly different approaches to providing solutions to common graphic needs. Our clients, the corporations and design studios all used different software so we had to be proficient in all software packages. It took a tremendous effort and many late nights to keep up with the constant upgrades and changes in the way the software operated.
As it turned out our in depth knowledge of how to accomplish graphic tasks by hand the “old fashioned” way was invaluable. Many new graphic companies sprung up as a result of the digital revolution but their expertise was centered on the computer not on the creative or practical side of the business. Our company became know as the people to go to when you had a problem that couldn’t be solved or absolutely had to have it done fast and correctly the first time. In the end our hard work and ability to change quickly kept us in business while many of our competitors went by the wayside.
Contact Info:
- Website: imagew.com