The name Mike Salisbury may not appear on the work, but he is the brains and hands behind the creative brand icons such as Halo; Michael Jackson’s white glove; Rolling Stone, Surfer, and Playboy magazines; O’Neil and Gotcha surf wear; Levi’s 501 jeans; Hasbro (one of the biggest toy companies in the world), Volkswagen, Suzuki, and Honda.

Mike has created marketing campaigns for over 300 movies including Aliens, Jurassic Park, Rocky, Romancing The Stone, Raiders of The Lost Ark, and Moulin Rouge. In the film The People vs. Larry Flynt, Flynt defends the First Amendment based on a concept Mike Salisbury created for Hustler. George Lucas collects Mike’s work and recommended him to Francis Ford Coppola, who used Mike’s imagery creation in Apocalypse Now.

His music industry work includes creating album covers for George Harrison, James Taylor, Randy Newman, Rickie Lee Jones, Ry Cooder, and Ike and Tina. He developed branding identities for Blue Note, RCA, United Artists Records, and PolyGram. He has a Grammy nomination for album design.

Mike has taught design, advertising, illustration, and photography at UCLA, Otis College of Art and Design. He is a contributing editor and writer for Forbes, Men’s Journal, and other magazines and has taken photographs for Vogue, Esquire, Newsweek, and more, including stories of his motorcycling and surfing adventures all over the world.

Mike has photographs in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His design work is in the Library of Congress, the National Archives, and the Smithsonian. He has been invited to speak across the U.S., Europe, and South America. His photography and graphic work have been featured in museum shows worldwide. Appointed to the Naval Academy, Annapolis, by Congress, Mike flunked a critical math test. (See all of the above.)