Inventor of the 'Pluto Platter' dies, age 90...

The inventor of the Frisbee, Walter Frederick Morrison (no relation), has died at his home in Utah.

Wow! What a perfect example of design & branding.

In the summer of 1948, a former WWII prisoner of war at Stalag 13 and LA building inspector, designed a plastic version of the tin pie plate manufactured by Frisbie Baking Company. The actual pie tins bore the words "Frisbie's Pies" and had six small holes in the center that hummed when the tin flew. Morrison and his partner, Warren Franscioni, called the plastic versions the 'Pluto Platter' to take advantage of the UFO phenomenon that had captured American's attention at the time. Brilliant!

In '55 it caught the eye of a new toy company and makers of the Hula-Hoop, the Super Ball and the Water Wiggle — Wham-O. Two years later they talked Morrison into selling them the rights. Soon after, when the Frisbie Baking Company shut down, Wham-O began selling the product as the Frisbee® — a name that children were calling the game of throwing the discs.

Morrison was awarded a patent (Design patent 183,626) and received over one million dollars in royalties for his invention. People have purchased more than 200 million Frisbees in the last 60+ years, it is estimated, more than baseballs, footballs, and basketballs combined. Mattel, the world's largest toy company, bought Wham-O in 1994 then spun it off in 1997.

Wham-O put out as many as 30 different Frisbee models since 2000. Foreign sales grew to almost 20 percent of revenue with sales in the range of $40—$50 million in the early 2000s.

More on Fred Morrison and the Frisbee: BBC News, Frisbee, Frisbee Article.

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A complete redesign...

We're proud to announce the completion of a new project. The Western Regional CAC (WRCAC) is a non-profit organization based in Colorado Springs that provides training & technical assistance to strengthen Children's Advocacy Centers in the western U.S.

Late in 2009 WRCAC asked Ampersand to rework the site. Ampersand has managed their site for some time. We've been developing the brand in printed material and a conference display and wanted to carry it over to the site. The existing site was geared only to CAC professionals as a resource for documents and training materials. The team wanted it more friendly to laypersons, allow different user types to easily navigate to the information that pertains to them and expand the types of information available on the site.

The new web site is inviting, and easy to navigate. It offers a calendar of training events, a directory of advocacy centers in the 13 western states, and documents for professional child advocates to access whenever they need them.

www.WesternRegionalCAC.org.

We invite you to take a look at the site. We'd love to hear from you. Let us know what you think of it.

Happy Winter Solstice!

Well, it's finally here. No, not Christmas — we have another few days for that. Because of a 23° tilt in our planet, 12|21 is the shortest day of the year in the northern hemisphere and each day therafter is a little longer for six full months.

I don't think we make enough of this celestial event caused by our planet being a little off kilter. We have such little time each day and even less on this one. Shouldn't we take notice of it and realize how important it is to make the most of each moment.

With that said, I will keep this brief. I want to thank my customers for their business this year. It has been an economically challenging year for all of us. I'm hopeful and fairly certain that next year will be better than the last. I want to make sure friends & family know how important each of them are to us.

I plan to use of this space to talk about good ideas for marketing and great design.

Happy Holiday!