Two Designers Walk Into a Bar · Evergreen Podcasts

Homage Designs - A Poster for Swatch and an Orgy for Disney

·50 min·3 clips

The Disneyland Memorial Orgy places Mickey, Snow White, Dumbo, and Goofy in sexual, violent, and drug-related scenes.

First, there are mattress jokes. Then Elliot and Todd move from padded-room riffing into the murkier business of imitation, flattery, copyright, and homage. It is a slippery setup in the best way. A Swatch poster from the 80s and the Disneyland Memorial Orgy get placed side by side, and neither example sits still for long. Depending on the angle, they can look affectionate, unfair, unauthorized, or some messy mix of all of it. The Swatch case gets the friendlier read. The host points out that nobody is likely to mistake a Swiss tourism poster from 1934 for a Swatch poster from 1980, so the borrowing lands more like play than deception. Paula comes off well here. Her Swatch work sounds bold, historically literate, and tied to a design practice with real reach. The episode also knows when words are not enough. The hosts mention website imagery and another Swatch ad campaign that seems better seen than summarized. Then the conversation wanders into television nostalgia. A 1950s Leave it to Beaver mood, run through the 1980s, gives them room to talk about parody, distance, and the strange ease of making fun of a decade you never lived through. Back to the Future becomes the quick bridge: the 80s poking at the 50s while still using its furniture, rhythms, and emotional shorthand. That is where the episode clicks. A poster, an ad campaign, and a movie reference all become ways to ask when familiarity turns into theft and when it turns into another joke. The ending keeps some bite. One work asked permission. The other took what it wanted. Both still needed the audience to recognize what was being borrowed. And yes, the bar tab bit comes back.

As heard by us

A conversation about homage, unauthorized use, and the design references that keep resurfacing.

This episode treats a 1980s Swatch poster and the Disneyland Memorial Orgy as more than a punch line. Elliot and Todd use them to trace a line back to a 1934 Swiss tourism poster, then out toward the way design keeps borrowing from itself while still leaving room for new voices.

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Why you'd press play

You want design history with pop-culture banter, copyright friction, and a little mischief.

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