Choices.

For the record, the movie that isn’t being made wasn’t mine, but it was important to me. But I threw it in there because it was just one more thing in a list of things that seemed endless and annoying at the time. And then people got all curious. But really, it just seemed like a complain-y L.A. sort of thing to say. And that from me, the first person to point out to my husband when he moans that “everyone thinks they are a screenwriter” that L.A. actually has a lot of people who aren’t writers. Go figure. And surprisingly, a bunch of people who don’t give a damn about the movie industry. AMAZING!

So, no movie but I do now have a brand spankin’ new stove! How exciting! After ten years of having to crawl on the floor with a long handled lighter and worry about scorching my face off (you heard me, TEN YEARS) I now can just turn the dial and…FIRE. Now I know how the cavemen must have felt! Oddly, so does my cat. For the week that we had that giant box of stove in the living room, it was like watching an endless loop of 2001: A Space Odyssey you know, that part with the monolith? Every night she would sit at the foot of the box and gaze at it. Lovingly? Perplexed? Don’t know. But after a while she would get angry and start pawing at it madly and then, suddenly, she’d lie down next to it, her little face nearly pressing against it and fall asleep. Um…weird. She seems a little blue now that it’s gone. But I am happy and I see many cupcakes in my future (there have already been some chocolate cherry breakfast muffins!).

And now it’s the seemingly endless ramp up to Comic-Con. My poor little printer is buzzing at all hours. But I am looking forward to it and hopefully all will go well. New this year are some “nerdy girl” and “nerdcore” tote bags, which I am sure will make an appearance here. And hopefully, some key chains, which will mark my first foray into the art of shrinky-dink-age. We’ll see how that goes.

Now, aside from making silly little cards and tote bags and the like, I do occasionally get asked to whip up a business card, or a logo or something like that and for the most part I am happy to do it. But what very often happens is that the person asking will have no idea what they want. Or worse, they will have a very vague idea but won’t be able to express it. Not that long ago I was asked to make a logo and I was only given this information:

1. Use orange and turquoise (Oh dear!)
2. The woman who is using the logo likes scrap booking
3. The theme is “touching lives, making memories”
4. If possible, it should have a star and/or a daisy in it

OK…well…OK. But here is my problem, when I am given such vague instructions I tend to overload the recipient. Give them too many choices with the Chinese menu philosophy. They can take the font from this one, the color from this one, the shapes from this one and mix and match, which never, ever happens. They just see choices and panic.

So, for the sake of posting something, here are the choices I gave for the above instructions, I went with the idea of “lasting memories” i.e. quilting, embroidery, photographs and scrap booking, but I threw in some other things as well. So, which logo do you think was the most successful?