Endcaps | Wallboards | Miscellaneous | Archive
Life at Tower Records
Learning to Paint FAST
I started as an assistant display artist at the small Tower Records store in Tustin. Although I had majored in painting and drawing at college, Tower Records is the place were I really learned to paint fast with acrylics and airbrush. Within six months I was the lead artist at Tustin and the most consistent Display Contest winner in the chain. After four years at Tower Tustin, I took a promotion to head the art department at a new 35,000 square foot mega Tower Records/Good Guys store called WOW! in Long Beach.
Foam core Display Innovator
At Long Beach I became much more inventive with another staple ingredient of Tower art displays: foam core. Due to the 30-foot clearance at the Long Beach store, most displays needed to be built from the ground up rather than suspended from the ceiling. This gave me the opportunity to develop basic score-and-fold techniques which were adopted by the entire region. The displays were strong, lightweight and easy to put together. My philosophy was to take advantage of gravity, create interlocking parts instead of using tape or glue, and make the structural pieces reusable from one display to the next. I was saving the company tens of thousands of dollars a year in display material costs.
Regional Art Director
In 2002, with Tower hitting major financial troubles, the corporate office made the decision to eliminate all in-house art departments at the store level. In its place, ten regional art departments were established throughout the country. Suddenly hundreds of store level artists were forced to re-apply for the thirty or so regional level art jobs that would remain. I was rehired as the Regional Art Director for Los Angeles.
The nature of my job was now completely different. Most of the artwork for the fifteen locations within my region I delegated to my assistants, while I managed paper work and visited stores to ensure quality and compliance. At this point I also received my first Power Mac G-4, which at that time was the top-of-the-line Mac. In the ten years I’d put in at Tower, I’d never touched a computer, so I needed to get up to speed quickly. I took classes in Photoshop, Illustrator, Quark, Painter, InDesign, and the basics of the Microsoft office suite. I eventually became the computer geek the other nine regional Art Directors would turn to for answers.
Opening Tower Records Henderson
My career topper was opening the Tower Records store in Henderson Nevada in 2005. The corporate office was cutting expenses right and left, and the complete look of the store was the responsibility of the LA Regional art department. We had about six weeks; four weeks of designing and making signs, then two weeks in Nevada for set up. Three days before the Grand opening we had a surprise: a forty-foot mural needed to be put together from scratch. Tower’s original contract with the mural provider had fallen through, so it was up to me and my two artists to make it happen. We opted to go for simple but elegant: eight 4ft x 4ft black and white “classic” music legends. We finished everything up with time to spare and the corporate guys were amazed.
End of an Era
On October 11th, 2006, all Tower Records regional personnel were laid off, and the liquidation of the once mighty Tower began. By December 22nd of that year, all Tower Records in the USA were closed.
About this Archive
The archive is divided into three categories:
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ENDCAPS—Promotional sale displays
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WALL BOARDS —the large-scale hand-painted artwork that hung on the walls of Tower during its heyday
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MISCELLANEOUS signs and other works
The archive is a sample of the many displays I created for Tower. More works were done, but documentation has been lost. I am available for custom mural work. Please contact me if interested.
To view my personal fine art works click here
Enjoy the Archive—Dan Kaufman
