Lisa Frank Employees Recall Wanting to Please Her ‘Like a Teacher’: ‘She’d Put a Little Red Smiley Face on Your Work’

Lisa Frank was very hands-on in the early days of running her rainbow empire.

In Prime Video’s new docuseries Glitter and Greed: The Lisa Frank Story, employees of Lisa Frank Inc. look back at their time with the company, including working at their headquarters in Tuscon, Ariz.

Patty Sjolin, a concept artist, product developer, and librarian for the brand from 1991 to 2000, recalls how Frank herself would walk around and check on people’s work.

“She was like a teacher. She’d put a little red smiley face on your work if she liked it,” she recalls. “If you didn’t get a red smiley face, you had to do more work.”

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Sjolin recognized from early on that Frank was “a complicated person,” but felt like “I always understood her.”

“She was demanding. She wanted things a certain way. And when she was unhappy with you, it was just like the clouds come over and cold shoulder. But when you  made her happy, you felt like you were in the sun,” she says.

“Everything as good with the world. It was really like having a parent that you wanted to please.”

Sjolin acknowledges a similar dynamic when Frank’s former business partner and ex-husband, James Green, came on board.

Green rose through the ranks after being hired as the first full-time artist in 1982, becoming Frank’s right-hand man in leadership as their relationship also turned romantic.

Tony De Luz, an illustrator 1996 to 2000, says, “I would say that James was largely responsible for a lot of their success.”

Quentin Eckman, a graphic designer who worked with the company in two different periods, agrees.

“He’s a good artist. James was very involved in the direction of the art. To go to press, it had to get past James. He was a real stickler … he was exacting. But he was good at what he did. He had a lot to do with building the brand.”

Sjolin notes that despite coming together as a leadership team, Green and Frank had different visions for the company.

“I think the way James looked at Lisa Frank, he wanted to bring it more realistic and technical where Lisa wanted to be the fantasy world,” she says.

“In those early years, you could feel the tension between what James thought was good and what Lisa thought. There was no screaming, no yelling at each other or anything like that, but it was like, ‘Who had more power?’ but it worked.”

Learn more about the story behind Lisa Frank’s bright and funky designs — and what went on behind the scenes — by watching the four-part docuseries Glitter and Greed: The Lisa Frank Story, now streaming on Prime Video.