“Profile”

"Eric Michelson’s career in product advertising, and his approach to design. The articles we reviewed were very insightful about design choices of Eric Michelson. The very first of the articles tells about his design choices while working with Honda. At the time, he was told to make a design that could compete with a motorcycle like Harley-Davidson, when people saw a Harley they saw men who were “bad” an image of cool guys in leather jackets. What Michelson figured was what most advertising companies figure out. Sex sells. Get the motorcycles to look sexy as well. So you take the motorcycles with men on them, and you put sexy women next to these motorcycles, and you immediately start having a product that sells more. He seemed to leaned sort of either an elevated look to make it look high class or something very sexual. As quoted by him, “A lot of my work is on an emotional level. Either it’s the macho sexuality of high powered motorcycles or it’s the elegance of expensive liquor…”. Most of his designs as well were all photographs but designed none the less. Placement and composition is everything. He also ended up working in audio stereo companies and liquor, as well as lingerie companies. For both of these, two different approaches were taken. When elevating something to a higher class, the placement of your product within your picture is important it sets the mood. He worked for Smirnoff and part of the problem was that more the elegant drinkers wouldn’t really see the drink as something at a sophisticated level so his job, was to make Smirnoff at that level esp. for drinkers who would consider a more elegant drink too strong for their taste. So present the drink the same way as a higher class drink so you feel like you’re drinking the same thing. He stated that you should always try to think about the buyer when presenting the product. Who is it aimed towards and how do you sell it to them. For the lingerie campaign, specifically stockings, this had to be a product aimed towards woman. Putting a sexy woman, with a bathrobe on, and then the beautiful leg exposed with stockings on, it creates the image that women can make themselves beautiful right in their own home."—Research and scan by Evan Jackson, Lester Geronga, Noah Little for Graphic Design Treasure Hunt assignment in Shirin Rabin’s graphic design history course, CalState North, 2016.