Q & A

Step Inside Design, Sep/Oct 2002 by Essex, Joseph Michael

Lou Dorfsman was instrumental in shaping the standards by which we measure the impact and effectiveness of corporate branding. Here, he shares some of his best stories on how he acheived this status.

IF YOU'RE A STUDENT WHO WANTS TO KNOW WHAT QUALITIES TO LOOK FOR IN AN EMPLOYER, OR IF YOU HAVE 15 YEARS OF DESIGN EXPERIENCE AND CAN'T SEEM TO MOVE AHEAD, OR IF AFTER 30 YEARS AS A DESIGNER, CYNICISM SEEMS TO OVERSHADOW YOUR ENTHUSIASM, READ ON. LOU DORFSMAN HAS DONE IT ALL, AND IN SOME AREAS, HE'S EVEN WRITTEN THE MANUAL. HE'S ONE OF THE LAST CORPORATE CONSIGLIERES. NOT THE WARTIME ADVISOR TO A MAFIA BOSS, BUT A SOUND, REASONABLE VOICE IN THE EARS OF TWO OF COMMUNICATIONS MOST POWERFUL AND INFLUENTIAL FIGURES: DR. FRANK STANTON AND WILLIAM S. PALEY, BOTH OF CBS. LIKE PAUL RAND AND THOMAS J. WATSON, JR. OF IBM, LIKE JOHN MASSEY AND WALTER P. PAEPCKE OF CONTAINER CORPORATION OF AMERICA, EVEN LIKE MICHELANGELO AND POPE JULIUS If, DORFSMAN'S ADVICE AND COUNSEL WAS SOUGHT AND HEEDED AS MUCH FOR HIS INHERENTLY CLEAR THINKING AS HIS ABILITY TO COMMUNICATE. AS AN INSIDER WITH THE TRUST OF CBS'S PRESIDENT AND CHAIRMAN, DORFSMAN WAS IN A POSITION TO HELP CBS NOT ONLY FIND ITS VOICE, BUT WRITE ITS OWN ARIA.

JME Tell me about your friendship with Herb Lubalin and your pre-CBS days.

LD Herb was my closest friend. We got married together, not to each other. We married girls from our class at Cooper and all lived together in a fifth-floor walkup in Queens (New York). Herb was barely scratching out a living designing book jackets. I got him a job where I was working as a designer for an exhibit house during the 1939 World's Fair so he could help pay the rent.

First I was drafted, then Herb. He was a skinny guy- 104 pounds. He and Sylvia (Lubalin) had a kid. We thought the Army wouldn't take him, but they did.

We threw Herb a going-- away party the day before he was to leave. He had never had a martini before -that night he had three and got very sick. While in the men's room he passed out and fell face first into the urinal, breaking his jaw and he ended up in the hospital. By the time he got out, the Army had stopped drafting fathers. That's one of the greatest stories of all time.

So I'm in the Army with a glider division, and Herb's working at a small agency in New York where he began to develop his typographic style. He was the best typographer ever. Just before my division was to attempt an invasion through Holland, the Army took me out of action because I had a perforated eardrum. They sent me to 8th Service Command Headquarters in Dallas to work in a military PR office. My outfit went overseas, and the poor bastards were sitting ducks - they were all wiped out.

When I got out of the Army, Herbie got me a job at the agency We eventually combined our portfolios and went into business together. I had a lot of exhibition designs, and he had a lot of print and advertising. When I was in the Army, I saw an art director's annual with a bunch of CBS stuff done by a guy I worked with during the World's Fair. I went to CBS and dropped off the portfolio. CBS offered me a job. When I told Herb, he said, "We'll take it." He was always a funny guy.

JME What was it like moving into the corporate world after working with small agencies?

LD When I started in 1946, Bill Golden was my boss. But, while I reported to this guy or that divisional president for the rest of my career, I always had a special relationship with Frank Stanton, the president of CBS, and William Paley, the chairman. Stanton is a man of superb taste, insight, and concepts. I referred to him as my DeMedici. Soon after I got to CBS, the radio and television entities were split. I got radio; Golden got TV.

I always showed my work to Stanton. If anyone gave me a hard time, I'd argue with him, and when push came to shove, I'd say, "Hey Frank, here's what I'm doing for these guys and they're giving me a hard time." He'd tell me to do it my way. I gained a lot of power, which I rarely used. I had lunch with Stanton once a month in his private dining room, and several times a year with Paley, and when I did, word spread fast through the building. Everyone knew I was having lunch with God or God's assistant. It was the best of all worlds, except I had radio-the dead end.

I was about to leave CBS for a big agency when Golden had a heart attack and died. The first thing CBS did was push me into TV I was a chicken-shit kid with a dream job dropped in my lap. I was surprised by how well I adapted to the business side. I had a sense of where the jugular was on business issues. I gave up lunches with art directors to go with business guys.

JME When did you first hear the term graphic designer? What does it mean to you?

LD I never liked the term graphic designer. No way! I dealt with big concepts, big issues. I did projects at CBS that would never fit the definition of a graphic designer. For example, Dick Salant, president of CBS News, called me in a panic and said, "I need an ad for Walter Cronkite. His ratings are way down." I thought, "If that were so, he would need a campaign not an ad." My first thought was that the Mary Tyler Moore Show is also based in a newsroom. It would be great if I could get Cronkite to do a surprise walk-on with Mary's 40 million viewers. The news with Cronkite, no matter how great, topped out at 12 million.