What it is.

1. This is a blog, not a website because I don't have the skills or the time to do a full-blown website. The niceties of design that I used to obsess over when I was an ad agency art director go out the window.

2. This is not a blog about the TV show "Mad Men". I really don't know or care much about the fictional exploits of fake "white" ad folks. This is a blog for and about real "black" ad folks.

3. My purpose here is to get acquainted with the current state of the mad world (especially as it relates to...er...uh, "melanated" mad men and women), make contact with and gather info on current AfAm ad folks for my new book and to begin to build an audience for it.

Monday, December 29, 2014

Mad Invisible Quiz, #2

First the good news:

You still have a chance to win the MIQ #1, since nobody gave any answers, even though lots of folks read the questions. The other good news I guess is that means there's a greater need for my book than I thought.

The bad news is now I have to ask a few more Mad Invisible Questions. Here goes:

1. What is the name of the current project whose mission is to bring more "colored folks" into advertising. I mean the one named after a fictional AfAm adman?

2. What was the AfAm owned New York ad agency named after an animal and when did it open?

3. Who was the adman responsible for the Coke commercial that put Burrell Advertising on the television map in the mid 70s?

OK kids, now go figure.

Tuesday, December 9, 2014

MAD INVISIBLE QUIZ

1. Who was the AfrAmerican designer elected president of the blindingly "white" Art Directors Club of Chicago in the mid 1960s - at the height of the Civil Rights Movement?

2. What year was the first AfrAmerican creative professional hired in a major US ad agency?

3. Which ad agency was considered the oldest continuously operating AfAm owned ad agency in the USA until its founder's death in 2003?

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Finally.

It's taken me a lot longer than it should've to start this blog.

About 45 years longer.

Of course I've got a great excuse for the first 35 years. For about 25 of them, there was no such thing as a blog. For the last 10 years, I was busy painting, writing and doing my best to save America...from itself. And for many of those, there was no popular TV show called, "Mad Men" whose well known title I could riff on to grab the shattered attention of the distracted masses.

But now, thanks to all those factors coming into play...and my remarkable patience, here it is, Mad Invisible Men (& Women).

Please stay tuned.

8:34 am, Nov. 19, 2014

Like I was sayin', I probably could have started this blog years ago - right after Mad Men became a tv hit. But my mind was occupied with other things - like making a living in my new career as an artist/writer/recovering adman.

I hadn't even watched the show until a few months ago, when I came up with the idea of writing an eponymously titled book. But once I got interest from a major New York player in the coffee-table, graphic design book biz, I put together a proposal that's  now, as of last week, being shopped at publishers in Europe and here in the good ol' US of A.

As I wait, I figured I'd put together this blog. These days, it's so technically simple, it's a no brainier. Right?