Michael and Spyropoulos. They are the last names of two great men. Not well known, but great nonetheless. My grandfathers.

The first escaped Albania in 1936, six months before there was no escape. The second came to America from northern Greece, alone, in his early teens. They each had 4th grade educations. Neither spoke a word of english.

Qyteze, where my mother was born, and where Peter Michael lived until he departed for Chicago, is an extremely humble place. A lost collection of lopsided stone structures, it’s high in the Albanian Alps, attainable only by foot, and surrounded entirely by rolling valleys of nothing but the occasional distant clang of a goat’s bell — the only assurance that there’s human life somewhere, typically in the form of a goat herder.

Of equal majesty is Kalavryta, situated at the foot of Mt. Erymanthos in the northern Peloponnese, and the birthplace of Konstantine Spyropoulos. It’s a charming little gnat of a ski town today, but in 1910 when my grandfather left, it was much more like Qyteze than Zurmatt. It proved worrisome enough to the Nazi’s, though, that in 1943 that they carried out the Kalavryta Massacre — so named for the barbaric and thorough slaughter of nearly all 1,400 people who lived there.

What does any of that have to do with graphic design?

It’s this: Hard work, tenacity, creativity and stalwart perseverance in the face of hopeless odds are characteristics my grandfathers shared, and are among those I admire most in people. I’ve given this venture their names for this very reason, under which my own efforts exist, in a futile attempt to live up to their example. It is a reminder of many things for me, but mostly it provides perspective in a business which often seems as though it has very little.