Nightglow Window

Art Directors

Oakley was showing a snowboard movie premiere tonight at its Foothill Ranch headquarters, and they arranged for a bus to pick up industry folks and retailers at the TransWorld offices.

I didn't go. It was nice, however, to see some of the people who came to catch the bus. Sort of like a mini warm up for the trade shows.

Dan Watts was one of the people who stopped by. He used to be my art director and is now the creative director for the snowboard brand Flow.

He's a good guy and I got along with him really well -- as I have gotten along with pretty much all my art directors. I even liked Luis "I cannot work under these conditions" Guilherme, our high-strung Brazilian.

I worked with a some talented A.D.s in my twenty years of magazine work: Barry Walker and Mike Grutzka (even Dwight Smith) and Mika McMurray and Kevin Mon and Marc Hostetter and Doug Manson and Dan Watts and now Nicole Byrne.

Making a magazine is a weird marriage of creativity and function and having a good editor/art director relationship is the grease under the skids that keeps the beast moving forward.

Nicole is great at putting up with my crazy ideas, and we trust each other. It makes sense that she sits so close to me because we’re constantly batting ideas back and forth. It’s fun.

It was also great to see Dan -- even though he kicked my butt at ping pong, humiliating me two games to nil.


Nicole Byrne Art