Michael Adams (graphic designer)

Michael Adams is an American graphic designer for marketing and sales promotion. He was born in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, and raised as a military dependent in the U.S. Air Force. He studied painting in Germany under Ernst Krupp and graphic design at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. He holds a bachelor of arts degree from Catholic University with a minor equivalency in architectural design.

As a student in New York, Adams was a freelance artist in the office of Herb Lubalin, and was mentored by Roger Ferriter, a Lubalin associate (creator of the L’eggs pantyhose name, package, logo and branding).

Early in his career, Adams was recruited by Italian hotel promoter Ernesto Barba to help launch the twin Soto Grande Hotels in southern Spain, and he later became the marketing designer for the launch of two additional overseas properties, the Ritz Taipei Hotel and the Sheraton Taipei Hotel.

In New York, Adams was hired by Wells Rich Greene Advertising, Ketchum Advertising and Siegel+Gale, where he worked with designers Don Ervin and Tony Palladino. While at Ketchum Advertising, under creative director Peter Cornish, he wrote and designed “An Opportunity to be Creative,” a direct mail fund raising package for New York City’s Central Park Conservancy which was a finalist in the Caples Direct Marketing Awards.

For 18 years, Adams was an outside creative consultant to Rowland Worldwide, a public relations organization. He contributed strategy and design for RW clients including Dupont, Canon, McDonalds, M&M Mars, Sandoz and Pedigree. He created the M&Ms candy cow exhibit, which earned M&M Mars much free publicity due to unsolicited media coverage. Candy the Cow was a fiberglass bovine covered with 66,000 M&M candies. The promotion was reported on as news by Newsweek Magazine ("udderly amazing"), the NY POST, WABC television, and other media, and appeared as a live "guest" on Live with Regis, where Regis talked about the nutritional value of milk chocolate, the strategic premise of the promotion. Candy the Cow was the precursor to Cow Parade, launched eight years later.

Adams is a visual arts teacher and author of the visual arts primer called Help Yourself to a Blue Banana (Behind the Scenes Books, 2005, revised and updated 2008, 354 pp.), which is the outline of a theory of visual perception called Nine Lessons of Light. He is an adjunct professor of art and design at Montclair State University.

Adams is the designer and patent holder of Jigamajoy, a 360º playing-card-based game/puzzle. A license agreement with Ravensburger was drafted in August 2007, but was subsequently put on hold due to concerns over Chinese toy recalls.

Outside of his design career, Adams was founder of Military Brats of America, an organization for children of American military personnel. In this role, Adams was profiled by Richard Pyle of the Associated Press in an article which appeared in 300 newspapers. Other newspapers published feature articles about the organization including the Syracuse American, The Arizona Republic and The Haittesburg American. He was interviewed on National Public Radio, and appeared on the early cable channel called America’s Talking. For the organization, Adams designed a logo, mascot, membership cards, member literature and the group's magazine called "Brats."

In 2003 Adams founded Behind the Scenes Marketing, a promotion/branding firm just outside of New York. He is the owner and creative director.

External links

• [http://www.behindthescenesmarketing.com. Behind the Scenes Marketing]