Francis Charles “Frank” Cicero, co -owner of his family’s poster print business, who created Business Business Buish with a bold black type and fluorescent color, died of heart disease on March 7 at his home at Mays Chapel Home. He was 80.
His company, Globe Poster Printing, produces the signs for generations of R&B artists. His work on Motown Revue paches the names of the temptation, Stevie Wonder, Martha and Vandelas and the four peaks of the cardboard sheet, which found a way to telephone poles and free buildings, creating an effective but cheap mouth -to -mouth sales campaign for the performers.
“Tina Turner was calling the phone all the time,” says his brother Robert J. Cicero -Senior “Our posters were a more expensive way to advertise, especially for artists on the way up.”
Born in Baltimore and raised in parquil, he is the son of Joseph J. Cicero, who bought the poster business in 1975, and his wife Marie. He attended St. Ambrose and a flawless heart of the Mary schools before graduating from the Catholic High School in Tawson in 1962. He won a degree in psychology from the University of Baltimore.
Cicero worked briefly in the print business for his father’s posters in the early 1960s, but became a worker at the Baltimore Social Services Division. There he met with his future wife Debra Debbie Rice. They married in 1975
In the same year, he joined his father and brothers at Globe Poster, an old Baltimore company that moved from South Hanover Street to the Candler building, Byrd Street in South Baltimore and then at Highlandtown.
“Frank works on the front countertop and was the embodiment of cordiality and usefulness,” says Milton A. Douger, Jr., a client. “In the black community, his posters spoke strongly. If you had no poster, no one knew that your event would happen.
That was not all a show. Over the years, the Globe poster has announced candidates for Summer Street City Council and Carnival. The late owner of Baltimore Oriol Peter G. Angelos has used a globe for his campaign at the Municipal Council since the 1960s, as well as Spiro T. Agnius for his various polling ambitions.
But they were most famous for the fluorescent color behind the fonts for James Brown, Aretha Franklin, BB King and Bobby Blue Bland.
“In fact, we did the bigger part of our work for clients outside Baltimore,” said his brother Robert. “We worked closely with DC clubs for Go-go Funk Sound and Hip-Hop artists. We also worked for rhythm and blues artists in Kansas City, St. Louis, Louisiana and Texas. We were just the cheapest form of advertising. “
The company had a minimum order of 50 posters; For a large traveling show, such as Motown Revue, Globe will produce 5,000 posters, with the name of the executing place, left empty so as to add later. Once the company had eight presses working four hours a day.
The posters found a way in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the Cooper-Hewitt’s Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum, the Art Gallery in Corcoran and the National Museum of African-American History and Culture.
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His wife told him that Mr. Cicero had designed many of the posters from the mid-1970s to 2010, when the Globe closed his doors. The family then donated Globe printed materials to the College of Arts at Maryland Institute.
Cicero was a student in the history of Baltimore and a member of the Baltimore street museum. It also cultivates a love for Italian cooking and prepares meatballs, pasta and Italian cookies.
“His childhood was full of laughter,” said his daughter Sarah Cicero. “He liked to annoy. He developed many friendships in youth that remain strong to this day.”
The survivors include his wife for more than 49 years, Debbie Debbie Rice Cicero, a former social worker who has also worked in the family business; Three daughters, Sarah Cicero, Julia Cicero and Mary Cicero, all from Baltimore County; Brother, Robert J. Cicero -Senior, from Cokkavil; and six grandchildren.
The table took place on March 15 at the church of the virgin conception in Tawson.