Branding

On Thursday I was walking through Borders. Passing through the non-fiction section on my way to the cafe, a book setting on the end of the shelf display caught my eye. "Oh, great Eric Larson's come out with another book!". I got as far as reading the whole title American Lightning: Terror, Mystery, the Birth of Hollywood & the Crime of the Century and thinking it sounds like a good read before i read the authors name, Howard Blum. Ah, so not Eric's work after all.

This is a great example of how branding can work for artist recognition. Simply based on imagery I assumed the book was of Eric Larson's work. Also, an example of how others can capitalize on someone else's branding, lending to themselves the original creator's reputation. Even after realizing my mistake I still thought it sounded like a good book.

It could also be a case of a snap reaction from me and the designer/publisher had no intention of any kind of tie in but non-the-less the design got me to pick up the book.

Eric Larson's popular historical, true crime books have similar covers which build a visual recognition for readers.


Howard Blum's cover has similar qualities; book title on arch and angle, long subtitle, large monotone location shots as the imagery.

Happy Anniversary to Me

It has been five years to the day since I arrived in Oregon. Don't regret the choice to move at all.

2008 Recap - 2009 Goals/Dreams/Ambitions

I'm not interested in recapping the year in detail. Frankly, it was a hard year and i'm glad to see it go. I am optimistic about '09 as i am in every January about the coming year.

A list of random 2008 statistics:

77 - the approximate number of movies i rented in the year {felt like i watched more}
-- that's about 154 hours or a little over 6 days worth of movies

19 - the number of movies i watched in the theater

28 - the approximate number of books i read {i'm sure i missed documenting some but have now completely forgotten i read them}

8 - the most posts i had in a month that were not prompted by NaBloPoMo

4 - block prints carved {disappointing, should have been more}

5 - projects i completed or were apart of that were not my own personal projects

70 - approximately how many photos i uploaded to Flickr

***
My words for 2009 is conscious. I feel like most of '08 was in autopilot and reactive. A lot of the goals i set for last year i still want to work on {some are life long} and accomplish {some are completable} this year. I posted last year about wanting to say "No" to more things and this year i'm doing it. Over and over and over again last year i'd say Yes and i didn't really enjoy any project i took on. I'm putting ME first this year.

For an exercise in conscious i thought it was be interesting to try taking 1 photos everyday for a year. Plus, what a great collection at the end of it all. Of course, there is already difficulties such as, i get up in the dark, i leave work in the dark and my house has bad lighting. I've still taken photos though, even if they are yellowish or have that ugly flash glare.

I signed up for the Creative Every Day project at Leah's site. At first i wasn't because i was boycotting signing up for anything but realize that it offers something i want, a way to create an online community. Leah is doing a great job of giving the participants a place to point others to what they've been doing and when i did participate last year i noticed people actually said 'hi' to me and considering this blog and creativity can be a lonely road i chose not to close that door. She posted about keeping a creative log - i started mine in an old '07 weekly calendar that i didn't use and it's going well!

As far as my creativity goes, i want to actually complete some projects. I want to be conscious about completing my ideas. I have a back log of things i was going to post to this blog from October. For example, i was going to show before and after pictures of my haircut {i cut a lot off}. I was going to post videos of my plane taking off as inspired by another artist. I was going to post sideshows of a beach trip in Nov. I was going to post snow pictures that happened before, during and after Christmas {i'll still do that one}. Point is, the photos are doing no good just sitting on my hard drive and i want this to change.

Among other projects of 2009:
- blog regularly and with substance {not just a paragraph griping about the weather, not that this is completely prohibited}
- Block prints {get some of those images from head to paper}
- Editing photos from my move from TX to OR {i realized i could no longer beat my self up about not doing this sooner or that it was too late. The realization that most people wait decades to write memoirs and it's fine if i start this one 5 years later}.
- Scan childhood photos {i have a box full that need proper respect to be archived}

There's a lot going on this year!