New Job

Luna Bazaar, seller of paper lanterns and other decorations.

Tomorrow I'll be starting work at Luna Bazaar/Cultural Intrigue, a Brattleboro company that imports products from Southeast Asia and India. I'll be doing marketing, mainly Social Media.

I am very psyched to be in a position, for the first time ever, where I can see a company growing as a direct result of my activities.

Even though I played an important role in FirstCall, and I was an integral part of the planning and decision-making at the beginning of Nabnasset (purchased by Avaya), I was removed from the sale of the product. Now customers will buy from the company through online marketing channels that I will establish.

Another first is being hired as "a creative". That's the current term in corporate circles for employees who do graphic design, web design, writing, photography and other jobs that require artistic ideas and judgment. What fun! It feels like being recognized for who I am - someone who loves to write, take pictures and observe styles.  For most of my working life I believed that I had to be something else in order to be of value to an employer, hence the years of software engineering. I am so relieved not to be doing that anymore.

Luna Bazaar, seller of paper lanterns and other decorations.

The company I will be working for has wholesale and retail businesses. Here are links to the two businesses.

Wholesale:
http://www.culturalintrigue.com

Retail:
http://www.lunabazaar.com

Time to start adapting to being in the same time zone as the people around me.
Good night.

Cultural Intrigue, wholesale seller of paper lanterns and other decorative products.

FAST New Music Marathon

FAST is the Festival of Art, Science and Technology that celebrates MIT’s 150^th anniversary.
Numerous events have taken place under the FAST umbrella in the last 3 or 4 months. This Friday, Apr. 15, 2011, there will be a New Music Marathon at MIT. This is bound to be one of the most interesting new music concerts in the region in a long time.

 

Kronos Quartet, Bang-on-a-Can, Wu Man, Gamelan Galak Tika, MIT Chamber Chorus

Friday, April 15
7:00 pm – Midnight
MIT Kresge Auditorium, 48 Massachusetts Avenue (Building W16)
Tickets: Tickets for this concert are available here.  Additional ticketing information may be found below.
Parking: Beginning at 6 PM, event parking will be available at MIT West Garage (W45), located on Vassar Street.  MIT also encourages use of public transit. The Kendall Square T-stop is nearby, as is the Massachusetts Ave. No. 1 bus stop.  Additional, limited on-street or public parking may be available.
Program: View the evening’s program
Press Release: March 14, 2011

A Passion for the Past

For the last several years I have had the privilege of working with Kathy Alpert, collector of ephemera and founder of PostMark Press. Together we have worked on web sites, greeting card design, tag lines, brochures, posters, and trade shows. Here are some views of the images and projects we have worked on:

Greeting Card line based on antique postcards.

SURTEX Trade Show Booth

 

Kathy's appearance on the Martha Stewart Show was a big thrill.

The web site I designed got thousands of hits in a couple of hours.

That's the power of Martha.

(I wrote the copy below the picture.)

Selections from the collection of retro images of men available for licensing.

Writing Copy

 I became acquainted with the widow of the composer Nicholas Van Slyck at a friend's wedding. She asked me to create a web site that would give musicians and historians access to recordings and transcriptions of his compositions.This is the introductory copy I wrote for the web site:

This is a review I wrote of the CD of Nicholas Van Slyck's music most recently released by Trudi Van Slyck. I designed the cover of the CD.

From My Garden

Having a flower garden is one of the supreme joys of life. Isn't any problem less burdensome when you watch a rosebud turn into a fragrant rose? All of the pictures below were taken in my yard, in Brattleboro, VT.

 

Passion Flower

Queen Anne's Lace

Happy Pair

Looking Up
 

Morning Glories

Always Try to Have More Business than Business Cards

It can be a lot of fun designing business cards. The possibilities seem limitless, and they are! But here's a practical word of advice: don't spend more time making your first logo than making your first sale.

Having said that, here's a selection of my successful and not-so-successful business card ideas:

I was commissioned to create this card for a publisher on her way to the 
London Book Fair. Tagxedo is the name of the tag cloud generating software
I used. I highly recommend it.

The concept here was to create a 1-page web site for an individual making the transition from newspapers and telephone books to the web. I still think the tag-line is the best.

Just plain big and bold!

Card for an entrepreneur/artist who created a line of whimsical night lights.

A title for this card might be "Computer Tutoring for Dummies". 

My message on the screen is "Let me help you."  

People who saw this were either insulted, or thought I was the one who needed help.

Photography - A Quest for Beauty

Why are we compelled to take pictures?
 

 

Ready for April Flowers 

Why are we compelled to take pictures? There are so many reasons. We want to remember: an emotion, a face, a moment in time. We want to show: This is what the baby looks like! This is me sky-diving! This is what it looks like in Iraq. We want to share it all, the significant, and the trivial.

I take pictures for all of these reasons, but the most important reason is this: I'm a Beauty Junkie. I see beauty, and I want to keep it. I will go out and find it at any opportunity. I will turn to the right, walk backwards, squint, and try to make it even more beautiful. This is what I have to show for it:

After an ice storm at Tufts Veterinary School, Grafton, MA

Geese flying south over the West River, Brattleboro, VT.

Gatorland, Florida

Hurricane in New York City

Balloons and Umbrellas at the Greenfield Fair.

 

The Book Barn, Chester, PA.

Lone Boater on the West River, Brattleboro, VT