You may not know him, but you definitely know his work. It’s almost a given that anyone who has ever driven in a car has at one time or another viewed his art. He is one of the premier billboard artists in the country, and his artwork consists of one of the most recognized names in advertising. Marvin Morgan Gunderson is his name, and for the last seventeen years he has been the artist behind the giant Marlboro billboards.
Gunderson, Marv to his friends, is the head man at Outdoor Media Group located near San Diego. He started the company in 1972 (then known as Dar Mar sign contracting, Inc.) as a one-man shop. Today, it’s a diversified company with over thirty employees and still growing. While the company may be getting larger and its future brighter, Gunderson still remembers the past and all the experience he has gained.
“I’ve been painting billboards for over forty years,” he said. “I’ve learned a lot of tricks on how to approach this business.”
Art, primarily billboards, has always been a part of Gunderson’s life. He was introduced to outdoor advertising on a field trip with his high school art class.
“We went to Foster and Kleiser in Los Angeles,” he said. “I was impressed with what I saw at the time. I guess it kinda stuck in my craw and all. I was only seventeen then.”
By that time Gunderson’s art ability had started to materialize. He won a poster contest in the Los Angeles area, the reward being his design on the cover of the Hollywood Bowl Easter sunrise service program in 1939. After his graduation from high school, he entered the University of Southern California School of Art. Although doing well and enjoying his studies, his painting career went on hold, due to the out break of World War II.
“I joined the Navy in 1940 and was sent to boot camp in San Diego, and I hated it,” Gunderson recalled of his first visit to the town that he would eventually call home. “It was so cold and clammy, I said ‘I gotta get out of San Diego.’ So they (the Navy) came through and wanted volunteers for the submarine service, so I volunteered.”
Serving aboard a submarine for three-and-a-half years, including 10 war patrols in the pacific, does not lend itself to studying and practicing art, but Gunderson made an effort to work on his craft. In his spare time, he would sit up in the torpedo room doing sketches.
“I painted some plates,” he said. “I painted platters with submarine pictures on them, showing a submarine making and attack on another ship.” “Looking back at them now, they were pretty crude,” he added. “When I did get out of the service…I did show those…to an art director that hired me in the outdoor (advertising business). He was impressed with them so they must have been a little better than I thought they were.”
A few months after leaving the service in 1944, Gunderson found a job at Disney studios. Now some would consider this the top of the matterhorn as it were, but Gunderson just didn’t take to it.
“1 only worked there a couple of weeks…I didn’t like it at all,” he said. “It was just too confining, too little a stuff to do. Very small stuff. I didn’t like the little stuff. I guess I wasdestined for bigger thingsat the beginning.”
After searching for awhile, Gunderson was able to get a job at Pacific Outdoor Advertising (now Gannett Outdoor Advertising) in Los Angeles. He talked Gino Raffeli, the art director into hiring him as an apprentice painter. He spent four years training with some of the best in the business such as Gino Raffeli, Fred Ferarri, Herbert Parrish, Ted Lucas, Su-Bong Lee, and many others. While he worked as an apprentice, he went to school at night studying fine art. Gunderson also did some work on the side at movie studios for extra money.
“At that time there was a lot of work at the studios/’ he recalled. “They would get overloaded…and they would pick up extra help. Gee, way back in the early fifties I made 300 bucks a day working at the studios.”
Although free-lancing on the side all the time, Gunderson was working steady at Pacific outdoor. While there he worked on his skill on a variety of subjects.
“1 used to paint the gas company girls in LA, girls in bathing suits, models, cowboys, automobiles, whiskey bottles, beer bottles, seeds, meat, strawberries. It was everything.”
Gunderson was moving up and out in Pacific Outdoor. He was doing most of his painting by hand at the time. He even did a 200-foot long billboard of Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra. In 1965, he was transferred to Pacific’s San Diego plant to run the paint studio there. Gunderson may have hated San Diego in 1940, but now he was enjoying it. When Pacific decided to close its plant there in 1969, Gunderson balked at moving back to LA and after 25 years with Pacific Outdoor, he decided to branch out on his own. Borrowing 3,000 dollars, he started Dar Mar Sign Contracting, Inc.
Having good contracts, and building on the reputation he had earned at Pacific, Gunderson soon had more work than he could handle. In 1974, Leo Burnett Advertising Agency in Chicago contacted Gunderson regarding their Marlboro account.
“Marlboro is real particular about what kind of work they want done,” said Gunderson. “They wanted real good art work, and the stuff they were getting painted around the country was really terrible. So they came to me and made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”
“I have been painting Marlboro for over thirty years,” he noted. ‘There are various skills of painters, like everything else, various skills of musicians, various skills of carpenters. There are certain people that do certain types of jobs. But doing these large heads of the cowboys that are thirty-feet high takes an awful lot of skill. It has to look like a giant photograph when you’re done.”
Authenticity, according to Gunderson, is what Marlboro is after in their advertising.
“They go out on shoots in Wyoming, Colorado, typical cowboy country,” he said. “The cowboys you see on the ads are not models, they’re all real cowboys who are used from time to time in their ads.”
The only flaw in the contract was the stipulation that Gunderson paint the billboards on location. The first two Gunderson did were in windy Chicago, in the dead of winter, 150 feet in the air. After safely reaching the ground, Gunderson made a proposal to Marlboro: ship the sections for these boards by semitruck to our sunny location in San Diego.
His next step was to set up a studio in San Diego to paint these units, and then ship them by truck to the various locations. Leo Burnett was so pleased with Marv’s work that they agreed to this arrangement. This system has now been in place since 1976. Sixty of these huge units a year are currently being painted and shipped each year. Each unit is changed with a new design every four months. Each unit is usually unique artwork, although some designs are used simultaneously in various parts of the country. Over the years, Marv has trained and developed a few master artists who help carry out this heavy production schedule, one of them being his son, Bill Gunderson, who is now Vice President of operations. Marv’s other son, Jon, is the President of the company, in charge of developing and expanding the billboard plant, while yet another son, Chuck is incharge of sales for the company. The company has experienced tremendous growth over the years. It currently employs some 30 people and services the entire Southern California area, with over 200 billboards in the San Diego, Riverside, San Bernardino, Palm Springs, and Los Angeles County areas.
Although still under contract with Marlboro, OMG is also involved in subdivision signage, sandblast signage, silkscreening, and almost all other phases of the business.
Looking back over his career and all the highlights in it, Gunderson can’t help but take pride in some of the signs he has created.
“Some of the Marlboro billboards are the best examples of outdoor advertising,” he said. “You pass these billboards going 65 miles an hour and you know exactly what it is.”
“There have been some beautiful designs we’ve done here, some gorgeous designs.” – Outdoor Advertising Magazine Nov/Dec 1991
Photo Gallery
WHAT FRIENDS SAY?
“Ross was always willing to help me when I started my career.”
– DAN WALCOTTEagle Outdoor“Aliquam congue lacinia turpis proin sit nulla mattis semper.”
– JEREMY LARSONACME Inc.“Fermentum habitasse tempor sit et rhoncus, a morbi ultrices!”
– ERIC HARTACME Inc.