Decades ago, a group of artsy types formed a creative services agency called Ideaworks. We initially settled into an office on Pleasant Street, on the upper floor of what was once Gallagher’s Sport Shop. The collaboration included a writer, photographer, videographer, designer, and illustrator. We moved to Dover for a few years, then back to Portsmouth for two more downtown offices. We had some pretty big corporate customers like Healthsource, Davidson-Textron, Liberty Mutual, HCA, Heidelberg-Harris, and did a lot of work with nonprofits.
Parking was as much a problem in the 1980s as today. Ralph Morang had an idea. In the analog days before Photoshop, he carefully cut and pasted black-and-white paper photos of vehicles against a shot of the Portsmouth Athenaeum in Market Square. Then he rephotographed the assemblage. We turned the picture into a parody poster that read: Beautiful downtown Portsmouth. Always a parking space.
With the help of a couple of local businesses, we printed and laminated about 100 posters. It was a costly process. The idea was to showcase our creative services company. People loved the poster. One copy hung in Goldi’s Deli, a downtown restaurant, for ages. we gave copies away at trade shows.
Looking back, I’m not sure our project brought in a single new customer. People would say, “So you make posters?” or “What do you guys do exactly?” I’d say, we’re a full-service creative services collaborative. “A what?” Well, the poster did win an award at the trade show. And based on the morning newspaper, the parking problem still needs a creative solution.
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