This is a true story. I was an Art Director at a design agency in the early 90s and the builders merchant Travis Perkins was our biggest client.
I’d given their new brochure the ground-breaking headline of ‘Raising Standards’ and deemed it necessary to have a Travis Perkins flag fluttering on the front cover (see what I did there? Standard? Flag?) anyway…
I think we did have Photoshop by then, but even so with our limited skills it would have been tricky to make it look authentic, so I received an actual flag from the client and found a location with a handy flag pole, namely a bowls club in Lancing, East Sussex.
The club allowed us access, so the photographer Jim and I duly turned up armed with flag, camera equipment and tripod. Once set up we realised we didn’t have one important thing. Wind.
We stood there hoping for even a light breeze but it was a calm summer’s day. How the heck can we make the flag fly? It just lay there completely limp.
Then Jim had an idea. He went to his car and came back with his fishing rod. Ingeniously, we hooked the top corner of the flag and I then went about 50ft away and pulled on the line. It must have looked very odd to passing motorists. A photographer is taking a picture of a man who appears to have gone fishing at a bowls club, has caught a flag, and is now struggling to reel it in.
It worked though. Those were the days…