Hi everyone,
My name is Sandy Resig, I graduated from the Minneapolis School of Art in 1960 with a degree in Graphic Design. Our class had 12 graduates. I don't know where they are. I am going to be 90 and half the time I don't know where I am. The art school consisted of the Morrison Building. The classes offered were figure drawing, painting, photography, printmaking, graphic design and advertising design. There was no student housing. Twin cities students would stay at home and out of town students would rent and share apartments. We had no computers. All of our designs were done on a drawing board using a T square, a triangle and a french curve. I liked the French curve the best. We drew with pencils, pen and ink, and charcoal. My teacher was Rob Roy Kelly who designed the logo for the Guthrie theater. In 1957 Frank Lloyd Wright came to the school to speak. We had an assembly and he came in wearing a broad rimmed hat a black suit and a cape with a red silk lining. He looked over at the students and said "You look like a bunch of pigs".
I don't remember one thing after he said that. The reason he said that was because most of the students were wearing wrinkled shirts, blue jeans and tennis shoes which is all they could afford. He required his students to wear a black suit, a white dress shirt and a black tie every day in his class. He died the next year at the age of 91. Did you know his son invented Lincoln Logs? One of the most famous graphic designers of our time, Saul Bass came to visit our school. He designed logos for many of the world's largest corporations. He was the first one to design exciting movie credits. Previously movie credits were always white type on a black background. He designed credits and movie posters for the James Bond movies, Man with the Golden Arm, Poseidon Adventure and many, many others. He designed the shower scene in the movie "Psycho".
After graduation, I planned to work for different companies to get experience designing packaging, printing, point of purchase and convention exhibits. I planned to start my own business offering all the things learned from my previous jobs. After 6 years I started my own company called Sandy Resig and associates. My biggest account was Our Own Hardware which had 700 stores. I designed their monthly sales catalogs for about 7 years. I acquired many toys and they started to think they were paying me too much, so they put in their own art department. They were 85% of my business so I was virtually out of business. I started calling on other hardware companies with no results. I stumble on a Wall Street Journal that talked about a company that did trial exhibits. I started a trial exhibit company and it proved to be very successful.
I want to wish all of you successful art careers and while you are still young, enjoy your youth. Thank you for listening.
Learn more about Sandy in the Lake Minnetonka Magazine.