When I was in my teens and maybe early 20s, I used to design logos. I think I charged $89.00 for a logo. I worked at a community newspaper and they would run the ad for me in the classified section. It was a small black box, about an inch square and it said “Logos” very large and then my phone number. This is before email or I would have put the email address in the ad.

I would prepare a few designs and the person would buy one and I would make it into a black and white contact sheet and that was there logo. No EPS files or PDF files or vector files, just a black and white piece to work from.

In the village where I live, there was a shoe store that had my logo on their window, for so many years. It was called “Coconuts” and the “T” was a palm tree. And every time I passed I was proud to say, “I did that.” That was years ago, ironically, I just ate at that location, it’s a restaurant now.

The whole subject comes up because I read that Pepsi changed their logo from the one on the left to the one on the right. And guess what? They paid $1 million to Arnell Associates to create the new logo for them.

I would say I’m in the wrong business, maybe I should go back to it. It’s like you create logos and if you’re fortunate, you get one huge account, do the job and retire.