It chews so soft...

Another big gap in posts - sorry, faithful reader(s). So much has happened and we've both been incredibly busy.

Beth: Flew her pretty behind all the way to eastern Europe, traveled her way to Georgia (think Tblisi and homemade wine, not Atlanta and Coca-Cola) and spent a month there as part of a UW study abroad program. She returned rejuvenated on life and full of fascinating stories. Sorry, you'll have to ask her to elaborate. Ask her to relate the story of the American college boys getting their first-ever authentic Georgian spa.

Seth: During the brief repast from inconsolable sobbing during Beth's jet-setting, dove in head-first to preparations for volunteer ski patrol this winter. This involved lots of classroom time for about three months as well as frequent trips up to Snoqualmie pass to practice our skills outside in the cold and rain (no snow yet). Two weeks ago I passed my final so I'm basically an outdoor EMT. It's a good thing that Beth is also trained in the first-responder arts or else she would have surely sent me to the hospital with my constant stream of stories and excitement about gross, gruesome and groovy injuries. Just this last weekend I attended a mandatory clinic up on the pass where among other tasks, we learned how to use an assortment of harnesses, ropes, suspended "chairs" and a modified rifle to rescue stranded skiers from a broken ski lift.

I now have a brief break in training until there is enough snow to open the resort, at which time I begin toboggan training - learning how to carry the broken folks down the hill on a sled. I admit I'm hoping for a couple of weeks before the snow hits just so I can get a break, but the Seattle weather is set to turn snowy as early as next weekend so we'll see.

Also, Halloween came and went. Again we had to skip the Davis-style pumpkin carve because it's just too cold to sit outside in October in Seattle. But we still carved a bit and put some indoor work into our costumes and hit the town. Photos below:


A few of us ready to hop into a cab toward Capitol Hill. Left to right, Matt's arm (sorry Matt), God wearing a Giants hat and jersey (preordained to win the series!), Juicy Fruit (the taste, the taste, the taste is gonna move ya!) and the lovely tragic French clown (or pierrot) - that's all sewing machine and glue gun, folks!



Out at the Comet, we met this mysterious luchador. Even though we knew his alter-ego, our instincts compelled us to wrestle - or run. Later this luchador took us to an odd party where we felt very old and superior and from which we were eventually invited to leave for being too old and superior. Clever move, luchador.


Kiss cover band! Those of you keeping score may recall that we saw this same band (in the same bar) last year. They were too much fun to miss and this year they had a Black Sabbath cover band opening. Both bands killed it!


The pierrot looking extra-sassy.


While the bands were fantastic, we found it more entertaining to loiter outside on the corner and interact with other costumed revelers - like John and Yoko here. Sidenote - as part of my Juicy Fruit costume, I brought along two packs of Juicy Fruit gum and passed out sticks to strangers. You make fast friends of strangers when you give them a taste that's gonna move them when they pop it in their mouths.


More outside costumes. This guy was a self-proclaimed "rave gimp." I couldn't get the photo to work out, but the bars on his shirt responded to sound so that if a nearby group yelled, the bars would jump. Just like free gum, a very social costume. This guy had a lot of people yell at him.


Party folk lined up outside for late-night hot dogs from the cart.


Innocent little angel needed the pierrot's help walking in high heels - and her help fixing his costume to "make my ass look good."

Paint your own Picasso.

Keeping busy. I recently did some more design work for my good friend Shawn. He made a short film that... well, you must watch it. I created the DVD package. Check it out:


Front...


...and back, with spine.

The film features Lily Verlaine, a local burlesque star performing her act, inspired by the paintings of Picasso. A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to spend some time with the lovely Lily at Seattle's Bumbershoot festival, where the film was screened. She was delightful. At the screening, a pair of older British women sat behind us and after the film, one murmured to the other, in her adorable old woman British accent, "Well, I hope I don't get into that kind of trouble when I sit on cushions." Yes, I know that there are actually no cushions involved.

If you're not offended by beautiful artistic nekkidness, watch the film:

Woman Sitting On Cushions from Shawn Telford on Vimeo.

Font Nerd Alert!

As mentioned earlier, a few weeks back I took a class in typography from the School of Visual Concepts here in Seattle. Local type expert, graphic designer and typeface designer Juliet Shen (check this out) taught the ten-week class as a sort of in-depth intro to typography, type history, type identification and use of type in graphic design. Fascinating! The lecture on the history of the letter A included so much historical context it reminded me of an episode of Connections.



Anyway, one of our earlier projects was to create a design to be carved into a linoleum block and then printed on their letterpress printer. So so sad that I ended up missing the Saturday session where the actual carving and printing took place, but my design turned out pretty interesting:

The objective was to use our name in a balance of positive and negative space.

Probably the most interesting project was an assignment to create a new written alphabet. We started by choosing one object word for each letter of the alphabet - so anchor, blender, cactus, etc. We then drew a simple image of each object. Then we used our calligraphy pen to draw a representation of the drawing using a maximum of three strokes. The alphabet:



Once the alphabet was complete, we were tasked with creating a sort of illuminated manuscript. This involved many drafts, as the entire paragraph of symbols needed to have a consistent "color" on the page - meaning that the forms couldn't be too open or closed in any of their interactions - meaning I had to go back and modify my original alphabet here and there. This took time. The finished manuscript:



The original quote: Last night, I tried once more to follow the oblique instructions on the scrap of paper. I took the professor's dice, and then, with the last, nightmarish sentence flitting through my mind, I rolled fifty consecutive sevens.

The final project was one we had worked toward during most of the ten-week period. The assignment was to create a "journal" to include all of our handouts, sketches, notes and assignments. The cover of the journal was to be designed with type as the dominant element. Part of what fascinates me so about type are the subtle differences between the weights and curves in a single letter - and the fact that these differences, when expressed across an entire word, sentence or paragraph, convey a particular personality. To explore these nuances, I created a version of what I learned is called the exquisite corpse. (Neat origin to the device and the phrase.) I used the letter R in twelve different typefaces with each instance of the letter cut into four pieces. These were bound into four books and affixed atop a box built out of black illustration board. The order of the pieces were jumbled so that it takes a few tries to get the correct match - so it's like a puzzle.










(the box pulled open to reveal the documents inside)

Since then I've also just completed a poster design class. The poster is now being screen printed at a shop here in town and I'll post about that class once I have photos of the finished piece. Until then, BURGER WITH A CHEESY CENTER!

Naughty Fruits and Yummy Vegetables

Poor neglected blog! Spring has stepped into Seattle and with it fun, adventure and more fun and adventure. Along the way, certain blogs get shoved aside and not given the respect they deserve. Will you forgive me, dear red-headed step-blog?

So what's been going on? Beth and I are still absolutely thrilled with the Seattle weather. This morning felt like a winter day - cool and crisp, overcast with wet roads and muddy berms testifying to last night's rains. (In this neighborhood you have to be careful crossing the berms because of occasional poo - but not dog poo. Yep, humanure. It's rare, but...yeah.) Now it's breezy and partly cloudy - oh and now it's both sunny and raining. Everything, everywhere is green. Monday I went for run on my usual route and then I repeated the route this morning to find that many of the trees have now grown enough to force me to duck my head beneath their heavy boughs.

A few weeks back we checked out our first roller derby bout at Key Arena. The bout consisted of two matches - one between the Sockit Wenches and the Derby Liberation Front and the other between Grave Danger and the Throttle Rockets. The gals have fantastic names such as "Sarah Problem?" and "Jalapeno Business." The first match was a blowout but the second was a nail-biter, right up until the final seconds. After the bout we met some friends at the Streamline Tavern (with the awesome beer can art by Mary), where Shawn was recounting the bout to another friend, going on about how the Derby Liberation Front were absolutely creamed. To our surprise, this tavern happened to be the hangout of said roller derby team - they're big, tough girls who don't much like being put in a negative light, especially in their home bar. A loud "Gulp" from Shawn and a round of drinks later and we were all friends.

We then made our way from the tavern to the Seattle Erotic Art Festival. Though the art was on display during the day, we attended the festival on Saturday night for full erotic immersion. On the stage was a mesmerizing show, including beautiful burlesque acts - both men and women - and some "aerialista" performance - think Cirque du Soliel meets burlesque. These performances were well-polished and impressive. A favorite was Miss Dirty Martini and her Garden of Eden act, which involved much peeling off of leaves and a finale with a magically-appearing apple (where exactly had she been hiding that fruit?). The crowd gasped and hooted and hollered. Much of the art on display was extremely well done and all of it was fascinating to peruse - never pornographic, but always suggestive or provocative. Some pieces really grabbed at our wallets, but we're not quite to a place where we can afford such luxuries - perhaps next year.

We spent another weekend down in Tacoma where we attended a wedding. As usual, the wedding was such a great opportunity to meet interesting people and to reconnect with old friends. It's always a bit sad when such weekends finally come to an end. Congratulations, Dan and Jen!

Each spring, the Seattle Yacht Club holds "opening day," which doesn't mark any particular "opening" but it's a day for boat enthusiasts to literally parade their monster yachts before the city. It's also a chance for rich old white people to wear fun sailor costumes. The parade is held just a few blocks away from our house, so we walked down to check it out, only to realize that our timing was wrong. But we caught the very end:



Float plane bringing up the rear


Fire boat hosing down the rear - click on the image to get a better view of the floating houses there across the water. Pretty cool spot eh? Again, we walked here from our house.


Police boat giving the parade's rear-end a proper final cleansing

In font-nerd news, I'm wrapping up a typography course at the School of Visual Concepts (a big reason why the blog has been neglected). I'm wrapping up my final project this week and will post about that and the class as a whole then.

We continue to receive our produce box from Full Circle Farm and we're still figuring out how to make sure we eat all them veggies before they go bad (so many carrots!). Here's a colorful solution form a few nights ago: Russet and purple potatoes with carrots - all from the farm box - along with fresh oregano from our herb pot and some salt, pepper & olive oil. Pretty!



What else? So much! We spent a few weeks trying out a different happy hour each Friday. We're taking a break until Beth is done with finals, but will post our reviews here once we start up again. We've been out to new restaurants, out to see bands (Mr. Gnome!), out to the U-District Street Fair, generally out and about. We're healthy and happy and keeping busy.

Have a Ball!

Warning: The following post contains possibly crude and certainly infantile language. Proceed at your own risk.

My friends Sean and Ashley live in Montana - big sky country - and like good Montanans they ski, hunt, fish, drink beer and play hockey. They recently started up a team in a local league and (not surprisingly) named themselves the Rocky Mountain Oysters. If you're not familiar with Rocky Mountain Oysters, learn more (and find a recipe). They're also known as Prairie Oysters, Mountain Tendergroins, Cowboy Caviar, Swingin' Beef and Calf Fries. So, yeah, they're bulls' nuts and people eat 'em. Montana hosts an annual Testicle Festival where you can get 'em served up just about any way you can think of. The festival's catchy tag line is "Have a Ball!"

So, how do I fit in to this nutty scenario? Well, every hockey team needs a killer* logo for their jerseys, so Sean called up his most favoritest graphic designer to help design some jersey art for the Rocky Mountain Oysters.

*Totally unrelated side note: Apparently, surfer-speak use of the the word "killer" to market healthy bread is fraying the fabric of our society and putting our children at serious risk. No, really. From the April PCC newsletter's letters to the editor in regards to Dave's Killer Bread:

“Great bread, we love it. BUT we, and many others, are contemplating approaching PCC to discontinue your line because the use of ‘killer’ and ‘bomb’ are not amusing and should be rejected as marketing ploys. We are pondering a boycott because we don’t want to normalize these ideas for our children or promote this kind of thinking in our culture or at our table."

Hmmm. There certainly seems to be a lot of pondering and contemplating going on. Maybe, as Jello Biafra would say, they and their children were forced to meditate in school. For some perspective, read about Dave's Killer Bread, his marketing ploys and his bread jihad and I'll let you draw your own conclusions. (Thanks to Beth for the newsletter tip!)

Anyway, keep your eye on the ball, nutty professor. So Sean emails his request and ideas and I jump right in and grab the bull by the...eh... I created some preliminary sketches for the team, including a very scrotal "M" which I was certain would be rejected by Ashley, but I included anyway to give Sean and myself a middle-school snicker. You can take a look at the sketches below (as always, click it for a larger image):

As expected, the design with the scrotal "M" was immediately cut (ouch!). They did like aspects of some other designs and I worked with them back and forth a bit to finally develop the finished product:


So, there you have it. Look out Montana, there's a new team in town and they're gonna put your balls on ice. And...testicle jokes ending in 1...2...3.

Though today is indeed April 1st, this is for real. Speaking of April 1, today marks six months since I quit the cigs. It's also now been about six weeks since I quit the gum. I'm nicotine-free, baby! Booyah!

Tourist Weekend

Beth's mom came up to visit last weekend and stayed with us for three nights. We spent Saturday and Sunday indulging in pure Seattle tourism. A brief recount:

We swam through the crowds at Pike Place Market where folks (including us) line up for fresh-fried mini doughnuts and a view of flying fish. Pike Place is also the home of a wonderful busking duo who play Pink Floyd favorites on acoustic guitar and accordion with much passion. Awesome.

We sat in a mess of weekend + downtown + midday + sunny day + construction traffic, where we moved three blocks in an hour. Less awesome.

We tried to ride the Duck - an amphibious craft seen all around the city during the summer, full of tourists and an obnoxious driver/tour guide in fuzzy floppy hat. The tourists all have bill-shaped horns around their necks and are instructed to "quack quack quack" at the locals, much to the uptight locals' collective chagrin. The Duck was booked. I'll admit I kind of wanted to ride it once, just to know what it's like from the other side of the plastic quacker.

We went to the Bodies exhibit downtown to see Chinese political prisoners playing soccer and tennis without their clothes or skin. Some aspects of the show were fascinating - especially the displays of the vein systems - like this one of the lungs - colored bright red or blue and suspended without any other tissue - just a delicate, intricate web of brightly-colored threads. Overall, the show had more of a circus sideshow feeling than a medical exhibit. It might not have helped that the "docents" were young kids with shaggy beards and piercings and high leather boots - and white lab coats. Don't get me wrong, I've nothing against piercings (had one), beards (see previous post) and leather. But they don't really project medical knowledge at first sight.

We rode the monorail from Seattle Center to downtown and back. A neat ride on a groovy vessel through towering buildings, but it lasts only two minutes. The monorail achieved international fame with its supporting role in the locally-made film Safe Passage.

We took the great glass elevator up up up 540 feet to the tippity-top of the Space Needle. Though it was a bit overpriced and heavily-touristed, this excursion was amazing. You can walk outside to feel the rush of the wind and look down down down to the ground below (always the savvy marketers, you can see the golden arches painted on the roof of a nearby McDonald's) and you can stay inside where they provide tables with Seattle's best view (except that it's missing the Space Needle) and plenty of screens with interactive displays and cameras where you can control the angle and zoom. And you can buy coffee. We lingered up there for quite a while. After living in Seattle more than a year and slowly becoming familiar with different neighborhoods, it was incredibly interesting to stand up there above the city and look at it all patched together in 360 degrees. It was vast and beautiful and intricate and felt like home.






From the observation deck - you can almost see our house from here. No, really! It's across the lake near that tall white building by the base of the long bridge.


Looking east to Capitol Hill, Bellevue and the Cascades


It's windy out there! There's one upper lip that's not feeling the cold.

Mustache March!

In a recent post I raved about the arrival of spring and sipping margaritas on sunny decks at happy hour. Well, I love love love how the northwest giveth and the northwest taketh away. I didn't see it, but apparently there was a dusting of snow earlier this week, here in the city. I felt it - cold, rainy, gray. I admit I typically prefer the cold and gray but I was really beginning to dig those warm sunny afternoons. Lucky for me, this slight emotional upset (tissue, please) was rectified when I learned that some students at my university of employment were promoting a fundraising event called Mustache March. I know, right? Nothing brightens a cloudy day like a big thick mustache. I carved this beauty a few nights ago - just before a dinner party where I met a lovely pair of retired doctors who seemed amused at the idea. It's funny that since our New Years mustache shenanigans, those furry lip caterpillars just don't seem so out of place to me anymore (I know, this is how it begins).


In addition to a great excuse to wear a mustache, March also has the honor of being my birthday month. Actually, not only is March my birthday month, but also the birthday month of my sister Kiasa and my friends Zack and Andrea. AND - get this - not only is March our shared birthday month, but March 9th is the actual birth DAY for me, my sister and Andrea, with Zack owning March 3rd.

What I'm getting at is that the universe obviously smiled upon 3/9/10 and our three simultaneous birthdays by showing me this sign:

Yes, that's a panda face in my blender. My typical morning smoothie was graced by a birthday miracle. Step aside, Jesus on toast. Right after this photo was taken, I blended that panda into oblivion and then drank it into my belly. With flax seeds. (The astute among you will notice the lovely "Wine Country" print oilcloth we use for a counter surface while we wait for the concrete counter top to be constructed)

Always incredibly thoughtful, Beth made my birthday a memorable delight. In the morning before work she let me open my gift - a large box which had been occupying an off-limits space on the porch for three weeks. It was an ice cream maker - joy! Old-fashioned style with the wooden bucket and you can actually choose between a hand-crank option or 'lectricity. I loved our old ice cream maker and used it often in Davis. When the old motor burned out, I never really made it past denial to reach the other four steps of grief...until now. Want to know what summer tastes like? Give me some cream, sugar, berries, ice and rock salt.

So attentive she is to my whims and whimsy that she also purchased for me an odd set of wooden letterpress blocks. I'm looking into a letterpress class and am generally fascinated my all things printed and...and she wrapped it so nicely with some textured paper - ooh, texture. The green parts felt all fuzzy on your fingers. The blocks were - curiously - all the number 1. Different sizes, different typefaces, but every one of them...one. We considered mounting them in some way, perhaps drilling holes into them to hang or to stake up but with the magic of Google I learned that such blocks are becoming rarer and that folks who actually use them to print have sincerely asked the world to collect them and display them as they like, but please don't alter them - so that they might at some point eventually reenter a printer's drawer. Turns out they look pretty nice just stood up on our mantle anyway:







That is all. Snowboarding tomorrow? Welcome, weekend!

Devil's T-Shirts

Quick post to show off some photos of my newest shirt design. In addition to these I've also got a green on black and a black on black. The jury's still out on the black on black. We'll see how it looks after it's dried and been set with the iron.

Shirts, Shiitakes and Sunsets

Last post was more than a month ago, so what's up in our lives?

First, the hobbies. As mentioned earlier, I've been trying to work on some homestyle screen printing down in the basement. It started out as a way to pass those non-smoking winter nights - hey tomorrow makes five months! Anyway, it's taken about five months to collect enough equipment and stumble through enough mistakes to have some tangible results. See my first design on two shirts below. In addition to a handful of thrift store shirts, I printed this design on a few canvas tote bags and sent them off as Christmas presents. Of course, I also have a bunch of totes with printing errors. When will I ever need seven shopping bags at once? Want one? Let me know. I've got some more designs in the works but I'm still running into new challenges here and there. I enjoy the hobby, though when things go awry, the time spent waiting for things to dry gets a bit frustrating. But most mistakes are also lessons and I truly feel like I'm improving all the time. Oh, and I've found surprising pleasure in trekking out to a large Goodwill a bit north of here to search through their racks upon racks of tees. Beth is fantastic at spotting hidden pit stains on otherwise new-looking shirts. I'll post photos as they come (of new printings, not pit stains).


The basement studio's vast drying room.

Interesting aside - my friend Shawn spotted a t-shirt with a similar design for sale in a local head shop. I checked it out. This other design was indeed a space needle but it was very rigid and had small, jagged roots coming out of the bottom. My design was intended to resemble tentacles (notice there are indeed eight) but I see the root resemblance. It was interesting to see a similar concept but quite different execution. And, yeah, my design is waaay more better.

Next, the farm box. Now that neither of us work at a grocery store, we decided to jump in to a farm box subscription. We chose Full Circle Farm based on recommendations from both Zoe and a coworker of mine. Even in the pacific northwest they deliver a box all year round, though not everything in the box is necessarily grown on their farm (or even in this country - note the avocados in the photo). But, it's all organic, they will fill in their own produce as it becomes seasonally available - and the grooviest thing - each week (well, we get a box every two weeks) we can go online, see exactly what's coming in the next box, and make changes as we desire. Even though we know what's in each box it's so exciting to get it home and open it up!


Those are shiitakes (pardon my French) in the brown bag, and there are some scrumptious carrots hiding under that lettuce.

What else? Got myself a promotion at work, along with a respectable raise. That's good news. Beth studies constantly and is seeing some fruits of those labors. I'm still engaged in that dastardly jogging habit, though only on the weekends. Perhaps I'll start to hit up evenings when there is a bit more light. I still walk to work three days a week and it's a pleasure watching the daylight shift. For a while there in the winter I was walking both to and from work in full darkness. Now I get sunlight both ways, though it is still in motion. Plants and trees can tell, and many of the local cherry blossoms are already bursting out in plant-porno fashion. Here's the emerald city, lit up by sunrise on a recent walk to work:


Crossing I-5 at 45th street on my way to work.

Speaking of light, last weekend we found ourselves in an unexpected warm, sunny paradise (well, warm as in no beanie required). Beth picked me up from work on Friday, we stopped at our food co-op for a few items and then we went out to Agua Verde - right off the UW campus - for some fantastic Friday evening margaritas on the shipping canal. Bliss. Absolute bliss.


Oddly long-necked birds in a tree near the shipping canal at dusk.


Shipping canal with the I-5 bridge in the background. From where I'm sitting, Lake union is beyond the bridge and downtown is beyond Lake Union. Our house is about 15 blocks to the right.


Friday.


Yep.

I feel kinda dirty

As the job continues to plod along in its predictable pace; as the cigarette craving has subsided and the gum chewing frequency has decreased; as the long northwest winter eases out of its shortest days; I find myself looking to more creative stimulation. The screenprinting is going well, perhaps more on that later. I have also redoubled my efforts to secure freelance graphic design projects as a way to keep my design sense sharp while bringing in some extra money.

Craigslist is among the sites I troll for work. I check the Creative Gigs page almost daily and almost daily there is, among the creepy solicitations for young female photo models, a listing or two posted by someone looking for design work. The posts vary in length and information. Some seem honest while others smell like scams, or at least schemes to get skilled design work done for extremely cheap or free (I'm sorry, I will not barter a logo for life coaching sessions or for a collection of portrait photos. Not now, at least.)

Responding to the seemingly-legitimate posts can take a long time, as it often involves researching their business/web site and possibly building a PDF of work samples specific to their stated needs. Once submitted, 90% never respond. I've gotten a bit of work and may get more, but overall it often feels like a pointless exercise.

The other night, after spending a few hours responding to a handful of posts I found myself wondering what my response must look like from the other end of this cyber-tube. How am I presenting myself compared to other candidates? How does my portfolio compare to theirs? Are their tones casual? Formal? Is my rate on the high end or the low end? How many other people are even out there in this emerald burg, reading this same post on this same night, investing a packet of hope in a collection of emails?

I devised an experiment to answer these questions. Yesterday afternoon I created a decoy post of my own, modeled after many of the same vague posts I have responded to. Here is a shot of the post:

The text reads:
Logo design needed (Seattle)
Startup retail boutique needs a logo designed and possibly some posters and brochures down the road. Please include examples of your work or a link to your web site as well as a quote.

(Side note, this is actually not the first time I have been involved in a Craigslist misrepresentation. There is a fantastic story about a certain Mexican rug afficianado named Mr. Dave Tapestry, but that story is for another time.)

I published this post at about 4:30 yesterday afternoon, wondering if I would get any response to such a vague post. By 5:00 I had two responses, both including price quotes for my logo. Response #1 quoted $2,500 and up. Response #2 quoted $45. So there you go. With two responses I answered my question about price quotes. All over the place. It's now 9:00pm the following day, so the post has been up for about 28 hours and I have received 90 responses. 90! I guessed 10 or 20.

I have read about 20 of them so far and plan to read them all. That's where the feeling dirty comes in. Some of the responses are so sincere, you can almost hear them begging "please" between the lines. Every one of these responses has a tiny bit of hope affixed to it, just like I affix a bit of hope to every response I post in earnest, assuming there is actual work on the other end instead of just a colleague conducting market research. Many of them sound friendly, like folks I may enjoy talking design over a beer.

Now, misrepresentation aside, this is also an extremely interesting window into a world of regional artists who might not otherwise be collected into one place, virtual or otherwise. The portfolios presented form an incredible variety of talent. I can't think of a better way to grasp such a comprehensive snapshot of design trends in the Seattle area right now. Of course, most of these are freelance folks, so the major studios are left out, but that's part of what makes this collection so unique is that these are the little guys who are designing for the small local businesses. Nike, Coke, Starbucks, Microsoft - these don't show up in this portfolio collection, but what do show up are visual identities for boutique clothing shops and restaurants, realtors and pawn shops, pet grooming and catering services.

The artistic styles on display are as varied as the clients they serve. Some portfolios include photography work, some include packaging. Some people have worked in the industry for decades, others are fresh out of school. Some are gifted illustrators, brilliant designers or visionary photographers. Others, well, others aren't quite so brilliant. All of them need work and are looking to use their skills to literally pay the bills. With two or three posts a day and 90 responses, there is nowhere near enough work to sustain the workforce. In a way, I feel better knowing that I may not get a response simply because there are too many to filter through. But I also realize how tough this search is and that when I do get to actually do some work, I had better make it count and hope for continued patronage and referrals because I may never get another chance. As far as quality of work goes, I honestly feel comforted to judge my own work somewhere in the middle - showing more skill and design sense than some but also seeing countless avenues for inspiration and improvement.

I'll pull the ad soon. Maybe 100 is a good round number to end upon. Now that I see my ad responses are swimming in a sea of portfolios, I can examine them and take steps to make mine float to the top. I won't need to perform my experiment again any time soon. A sincere and heartfelt thanks to all the local designers for playing along.