Davisville, Sept. 22, 2025: Useful but dull information + humor = attention

You’ve got information. People need to hear it. It’s useful ... and it’s dull. This circumstance is a common problem for people who work in communications, such as today’s guest, Mark Deamer. One way to draw the disinterested is humor, if you get the balance right, which is why we open this week with Floppy and Cow. They’re a couple of screwball characters — well, Cow is deeper than that — that Mark helped create to present basic messages around tech and cybersecurity at UC Davis a few years ago. They won a couple of awards from a university tech trade group.

Mark, a Davis lifer who moved to town when he was 3, is a designer and illustrator by trade, has designed stage sets for local theater, and has created interpretive illustrations for locations and clients ranging from Davis Central Park to the Cache Creek Conservancy. He’s one of those people in Davis whom you might not have met, in other words, but you might have seen his work. We talk about it all — design, art, where ideas come from — today on Davisville.

Image comes from the video animation "KB Khronicles" 

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