Resume

Portfolio

Cup O Joe

Campus Press

Victoria's Flowers

Suzuki Samurai

Copco Papers

Radio Reel

©2008 John Pribble III All rights reserved.

"I really enjoy a semi-anarchist attitude in capturing someone's attention. I think there's so little of it these days. It may shock people on the first read."

"Seldom does one see a small newspaper ad work so hard to capture attention through a simple headline."

"It's interesting that we all chose this because we're designers and you wouldn't think of this as being design: it's non-design. It's vernacular design, but it is compelling because of the words, because of the boldness. It works. It stops you and that's what it should do."

-- Judge's Comments

This is just one of hundreds of retail print ads I wrote and produced or directed during the two years that I was advertising director and business manager of The Campus Press at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Running a retail advertising department gets you very, very close to the action, and you quickly learn what sells.

This ad went from problem identification ("Hey, John! Our photographer just quit. Can you run an ad to find us a new one?") to final art in about 10 minutes. We were on deadline and I had to get the art to the printer. I did it in Pagemaker 4.0 on a Mac SE 30 with a whopping 4MB RAM. Output was on an Apple IINT at 300 dpi. That was state of the art at the time. We were one of the first digital pre-press college papers in the county. Those were the days!

I entered this ad in the Columbus Society of Communicating Arts annual awards show on a whim. I just happened to be home from school on break at deadline time. I liked this ad but figured it would be lost on a CSCA audience. No one was more surprised than I when it won a Judge's Consensus Choice. There were hundreds of entries in this show, about a hundred winners and maybe a half dozen consensus choices (curatorial judging). There was a lot of really good work and I appreciate that the judges liked my idea despite the lack of any technique. The judge's comments are to the left under the credits (this page is from the 1992 CSCA Awards Annual).

September 1991