Meet Dan Arriola of Bravo Design in Burbank

Today we’d like to introduce you to Dan Arriola.

Dan, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I was born in Boyle Heights and lived there with so many relatives nearby until my parents moved out to Whittier when I was the age of 10.

In 1972, I was 18 years old (still living at my parents’ home) and was enjoying my summer, working part time nights at the produce market in downtown LA and going to the beach Monday through Friday and playing in baseball leagues on weekends. I came home from the beach one afternoon with my towel over my shoulder and walked into my parents’ home and there was one of the neighbors there at the table talking to my parents with a newspaper open to the movie ads section. I said Hi and started heading to my room when they all called me and asked me to come over. I came to the table and he (Alex Martinez) starts talking to me, saying how they set up the ads and how they change constantly. I still had no idea what he was talking about or why. Finally, he came out with it and said the company he works for (JP Advertising) wanted to bring someone in for the rest of the summer to help file things and help them get more organized. I said no thanks, just wanted to enjoy summer till Junior College started in September. He left and my parents persuaded me to just give it a try. Well I grew up playing sports and all I really knew was being aggressive and competitive. My first day at work was supposed to start at 9 am but the way I am I showed up at 8 am. The next person who had a key got there at 9:15 am. My responsibilities were very simple just get all the freshly printed ad proofs that got delivered from printers in the morning and prepare them for our paste up artists to use by sprinkling baby powder on the proofs and lightly buff them with cotton balls so the ink didn’t spread when the artist used them. After that I had to start going through all the large envelopes (22×28) that had material for all the different movies the company had worked on and is working on.

As days went by, it amazed me how all the artists showed up late, talked, drank coffee and tried to avoid the work that was posted to the job board that was difficult. You were supposed to walk up to the list and write your name on the job you were taking. after watching people work for a couple of weeks I had my own drafting table and T-Square so I figured I could work as well and decided to do a simple ad myself. The company had to give me my own key to the office because I was always so early so instead of showing up at 8 am I got there at 7 am to take care of my immediate duties then went to the job board and found a really simple ad which was just changing the information at the bottom from a “Starts Today” to Now Showing.” Well I finished that job and had 3 other simple things done from the board before the regular staff finished their coffee and conversations. I realized later it made them look bad that my name was all over the board since I was doing the easy quick jobs. I wasn’t popular but I didn’t care because I just wanted to work and get better at what I was doing. I got a lot better very quickly and even gained respect from the creative director of the company who would request I help him when I wasn’t busy.

That summer went by fast and I decided why go to college so I could learn to do what I was doing already. As I got better I was called on to work late night more so my days were getting to be pretty long since I still started work at 7 am and normal was getting out by 9 or 10 at night.

After about a year and a half, I started thinking this industry wasn’t right for me since I had always been athletic and outdoors and now the hours were ridiculous and some days never got outside during the day so I was 20 years old now and was considering joining the Marines. 2 Weeks later a friend of mine told me LA City Fire Department was going to be testing at Hollywood High School on Saturday and I should go with him. Well I did, there were around 500 people who showed up and I was really surprised when the contacted me a month later to continue additional testing. Since the initial Hollywood High School session was all Academic tests the new ones were for physical agility, psychological and medical with the final tests being at a fire department testing facility where you actually did fireman stuff like climb 2 story ladders, connect fire hoses etc. well I couldn’t believe it when they called me and gave me a dater to report to the Academy. I gave a 3 week notice to JP Advertising since that’s how much time existed before The Academy start date so I worked had as usual until that time.

On my last day of work at JP, I was just waiting to get my last pay check around noon and my plan was to leave then. The owner of the company (Joe Piemonte) came into my office and asked if I would go to lunch with he and Mitch Yasuda (creative director). I didn’t have a clue what it could be about but went with them anyway.

We sat down and Joe said to me that Columbia Pictures had just moved from NY to LA and JP Adverting was awarded the account. Joe and Mitch both said the needed me to stay because there was nobody else in the company they felt could handle that responsibility. Joe said he would triple my pay and that I would be in charge of all the work in the company which meant all the lazy artists who were a lot older than I would now work for me.

Joe told me I could hire or fire anyone I needed to and buy any equipment I would need. Let’s see… I’m 20 years old and some incredible amount of responsibility is being offered to me. I was still undecided until he hit me with the hammer (the hammer being a check for $5,000 in 1974. Dummy, I took it.

A few months before I was put in charge of everything, Joe had hired an 18 year old guy from West Valley Occupational Center (Ramon Buensuceso) his specialty was as a retoucher and since my organizational strengths were his weakness and my weakness were his strengths we had teamed up on project to be very successful.

Ramon became one of my key people and we were getting beat up bad. What Joe didn’t tell me is I was going to have to deal with one of the toughest people ever in the Movie Industry (you’ll have read my book in 10 years for specifics).

Instead of working 14 hours a day it was now more like 18 hours a day and the pace was unbelievable. The client demands were so great that we actually were running trying to get to our lab faster, ordering food so nobody would go out to lunch and seriously getting screamed at all the time by the client.

In 1974, we were 14 people @ JP advertising a year later, in 1975, we moved the company from Hollywood to buying our own building in Burbank (I guess business was going well). 21 people worked at JP in 1975. Over the next few years we kept growing and besides Columbia Pictures we also worked on a lot of Disney, Warner Bros., MGM, United Artists and others. JP Advertising because of my aggressive and competitive nature built a reputation of getting a lot of work done fast. We dominated the pre-computer days because or work was good and neat.

After computers were integrated into the industry the competitive field became much bigger since anyone with a computer and a friend in marketing department of a studio was now able to do some work (also thanks to software).

By 1990, JP advertising was nearly 90 people and in reality, not near as efficient as a smaller company could be. We had a lot of accounts with different people handling them. None were as efficient as my immediate group which we called ourselves the “A” team and usually got the most difficult work.

Getting back to our client from Columbia Pictures after he while the Marketing team he was with at Columbia left and went To Universal Pictures, they now gave us 90% of their work. after a few of years he left and joined MGM where he repeated the process and now gave us a ton of MGM work.

In 1999, JP Advertising closed its doors and there were still 45 people working there at the time. The main reason for the closure is that for the first time our owner was not investing in the company and had too many other things influencing the company wellbeing. I then took a group of 10 people and joined a company called J&A.

The 2 owners of J&A were Tom Jacobson and Marv Atkins, They started their business in 1989 and previously worked at JP Advertising. They brought me and my team into their company because I was doing nearly 2 million dollars a year of Disney business plus some other work as well in 2001 something went bad. On a day when I had to go see a client at Polygram Pictures Disney contacted my team and switched around some ads that we were working on to be printed in trade publications like Daily Variety on the movie “Unbreakable” these ads were on deadline to be printed so when Disney called and I wasn’t there they talked to one of my team members who didn’t follow procedures. We had a system in place where every ad had to go through the proofreader and also pull a color proof to check as well.. Both were ignored because of the pressure my team felt and sent out the ad with a typo. It printed and I lost 2 million dollars of business and guess what… my job.

I was let go on Tuesday afternoon and was asked to leave immediately, Ramon Buensuceso was as well.

I went home and let my wife know I lost my job who kept insisting I was joking… I wasn’t. The next morning, I woke up early as usual and did what I always did, drive. I decided the thing to do was start my own business. So with no clients, no computers and no people I went to go look for space to rent. One step at a time. I drove into Glendale and looked at a space to rent but it was a mess so I got I my car and drove to downtown Burbank. I walked into a building and id didn’t feel right so I walked across the street into another building that had a couple of offices for lease and the door was unlocked to a little 800 sq. ft. space on the first floor of a 3 story building in a really cool area of downtown Burbank. 2 Days later we rented space and started Bravo Design.

We had a really tough time trying to get started but one thing paid off for us…people in the industry all new that they could depend on us to show up early, don’t go to lunch, work all night if needed, and this has happened many times in my career and I don’t mean work all night and then not come into work. No, we have worked 30 something hours straight many times. Sick we learned to work sick.

After a year, things started going really well with Work from Fox, Warner Bros and just a little bit from Disney.
I also go an interesting phone call on day from my 0riginal client now retired) who wanted to come have lunch with me. He came over and we walked down the corner to have lunch @ Gordon Biersch Restaurant. He proceeded to apologize for how he treated us for all those years and I could tell it had really bothered him. I believe he was very surprised when I told him that if it wasn’t for the hard lessons he gave us we wouldn’t have this company today. I let him know how much I learned from him and that in all the years I have been in the industry we have never had a more loyal client. We both walked away from that lunch very satisfied that we could be so honest with each other. for the next 6 or 7 years we got to see each other and I can truly say we were friends.

Today, 17 years later from the beginning of Bravo Design we remain the “A” team with a group of 7 people working for Warner Bros., Fox, Sony and Paramount. Things constantly change and one thing I learned a long time ago is we have change with it.

Disney just bought Fox so because of no fault of ours, we may lose Fox. Time to get going and change again.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Every client works differently and sometimes being a small staff means you really have to dig in and sacrifice. Not everyone is capable of working with a sense of urgency. Sometimes there is too much work and other times there is nothing to do.

Please tell us about Bravo Design.
Basically, in the movie industry we can create key art or get key art another agency created and adapt it to many other uses such as usage for outdoor campaigns, newspaper ads, digital and social media purposes.

We are known for speed and reliability and constantly put to the test.

It’s funny but even now 17 years later, I thing about the fact that we have been around that long when others have failed and just looking around knowing we have good people and equipment and couches and televisions and all these things we earned with hard work and reputation.

If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
I would have been a fireman. 🙂

Contact Info:

• Address: 150 E. Olive Ave. Suite 304
• Phone: 818 563-1385
• Email: danny@bravodesigninc.com

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