In 1953, Seymour Chwast and I were both working in the art department at Esquire. Seymour knew the Esquire job wouldn’t be as creative as some of his earlier jobs, but he wasn’t prepared for the utter lack of opportunity there was to do anything original or inventive. I was so pleased at keeping a job I barely noticed the hack nature of my work until Seymour showed up.
Over lunch, when he began kvetching again about the job, I suggested we do a promotion piece that we could mail to art directors ourselves. Maybe we could pick up some illustration work on the side. The Eisenhower stock market was booming. What could we lose?
