Editor: Christopher Bigelow; Photography (Christmas Party): John WongNeways—Insight Newsletter Jan/Feb 2009
Editor: Christopher Bigelow; Photography (Christmas Party): John Wong
Becky and the Bear
Another story from the pages of my journal, Walking The Pacific Crest Trail, see Charlie Don’t Backpack.
Jeff Booth and I arrived in Stehekin, hungry! Over the past three days we rationed a single package of Lipton soup. We had lost all our food during the Night of The Attack of The Pocket Gophers.Stehekin sits at the northern end of Lake Chelan, a length of 55 miles, and the only way in is either by boat, seaplane, or walking in.
Jeff and I had split up from Becky and Chris six days earlier, Chris had become ill and we thought it best for him to see a doctor—we would later learn that he had a hernia. We went to the Post Office to pick up Becky's, Chris', and my last food drop, we were nearing the end of our trek. The postal clerk refused to give us the package since it was addressed to Becky and Jeff didn’t plan a drop for himself, he had planned on finishing the trip in only three more days.
Between the two of us we had a total of two dollars—we tried begging. No luck. We went to the only restaurant in anticipation of buying a candy or two. Jeff picked up a menu and immediately saw a Fruit Salad listed for a mere $1.90. During our last three days of hunger we both had dreamed of fresh fruit and vegetables. As we sat there waiting for our order, in our delirium, we had visions of a large bowl/plate stacked with freshly chopped apples, oranges, grapes, strawberries, and maybe even some walnuts. The longer we waited, the longer the list of fruit we envisioned. What a let down when the waitress finally brought out a four inch shallow dish filled more with juice than actual fruit from a can of fruit cocktail. No tip for her!
That evening a ranger was herding all the campers into a single group, a troublesome bear was raiding food packs. The rangers had set up cables suspended across trees for everyone at the campsite to cache their food. Once we suspended our packs we moved to the open area where everyone was to sleep on the ground in a single group. During the night we were all awakened by screaming, the bear was walking amongst the sleeping campers searching for something to eat or smelling the toothpaste on peoples breath. No one slept very well the rest of the night.
The next evening Becky and Chris arrived by boat—FOOD! We immediately picked up our food and over dinner exchanged stories about the last seven days. After dinner we cleaned up, removed the items we wanted out for the night and tried to suspend our packs.
With the new influx of people that day the Purple Point Campground was full. We were forced to tie all four packs on one pulley, the one and a half inch pulley had to hold a combined weight of 250+ pounds. Before we could raise the packs all the way to the top, the rope jumped the groove and jammed. We had brought along a quarter inch rope for a clothesline and emergencies. Becky being the smallest was elected to go up and try to unjam the rope.
I could have reached out and touched the brown bear as it walked past Jeff, Chris, and me, my fear momentarily left me as I was fascinated by its massive size. The golden reddish coat glistened as the muscles beneath the thick coat contracted with each step. The bear then stood on its hind legs and towered over us, it was at least nine feet tall not even counting its reach. As it reached for our backpacks, Becky screamed bloody-murder, she was still suspended in the air with our backpacks.The packs were just inches out of reach, Becky had to raise her legs, after a while the bear tried a different tactic. Within seconds it climbed one of the trees and tried to reach for the packs, still out of reach. Who ever started that rumor that large bears can’t climb trees knew nothing about bears. Frustrated it climbed down, strolled over to the other tree and climbed it. It repeated this action a few times before moving on. The whole time Becky screamed. Jeff, Chris and I, holding on to the rope that held Becky, shuffled around the bear as it walked past. The rest of the campers were banging on pots trying to scare the bear away. One knucklehead ranted and raved that he had a hatchet back at his campsite and was positive he could kill the bear with one throw to the head. Everyone else told him to be quite, in not so polite terms.
By the time the rangers arrived the bear had moved on. Becky couldn’t budge the packs before the bear appeared, but now with her adrenaline rushing she easily fixed the jammed rope.
Neways First Annual Boo Run Run
Some images from the Boo Run Run, over 200 participants!
AIGA Business and Design Conference 2008
I attended the GAIN Conference in NYC, best conference I have ever attended. Of course there were some presentations that were stinkers, but there were some that were worth it just by themselves. I originally wanted to go just to see Malcolm Gladwell and get motivated by the artist presenters, but the speakers who turned out to be the most relevant were the non artists. One speaker in particular who really touched on the subject/problems of what my employer is going through was a Cultural Anthropologist. Our company had recently changed owners (a good thing) and is having difficultly resolving who they are. I'm excited about sharing what I learned with everyone at the office.I was in NYC for four days but had no more that five hours total to see any sights. On my lunch hours I did some speed walking and Sunday morning before heading to the airport I went to Central Park and the Whitney Museum of Art. Above are a few photos from the trip, click on all images for a larger view.
Guest Speaker at our office
Justin Ahrens of rule29 visited our office on October 4. Jason Robinson met him at a past HOW Conference and kept in contact. Jason made arrangements for our company to bring Justin here, to Utah, and speak to us. He first spent the morning reviewing and critiquing every one's portfolio—best portfolio review I have ever witnessed. He had some excellent tips of dos and don’ts, plus excellent comments of the work itself.
I hope we can do more events like this, plus it would be great to bring in the other designers from our international offices too.
Neways—Boo Run T-shirt, final design
I got another t-shirt design selected, seems to be the only thing that I do lately that gets approvals. Maybe I should open up a t-shirt shop? Steve Keele and Jason Robinson also submitted some designs, very cool—I hope they post their designs on their blogs. Our office is sponsoring a Halloween run for the employees, with my bad knees I only signed up for the 1K.
Here's a close up of the sleeve art, the bat illustration is a combination of Celt, Myan, and Māori styles. Steve came up with calling the event the Boo Run Run.
These are other concepts that I submitted.
Neways Japan—Rice Packaging
Package design for rice:
Our Japan office requested some designs for a rice package, the rice will be sold at their new Healthy Homes Village store. Design requirements: include the watercolor painting of their property, painted by a local distributor. Second, design a logo for the new Healthy Homes Village and incorporate it into the design.
(top to bottom) The first image is a closeup of the logo, I didn't want to design a new logo and have the package peppered with numerous logos—my solution was to do a graphic illustration of the painting and integrate it with the Healthy Homes logo. The next image is one my package designs. The final image, the selected package design, was submitted by the packaging company.
This was no joy ride
August 1966, my grandfather who was in his 80s became gravely ill. My aunt packed me, her son, my grandfather into the car and rushed to the nearest hospital.She pulled up to the emergency doors at LDS Hospital and my grandfather was hurriedly carried away. My cousin and I were left sitting in the car. LDS Hospital is located in an exclusive neighborhood in the foothills on the north end of Salt Lake City. The area is populated with older, small, overpriced homes. One of the first areas developed by the Mormon pioneers.
Minutes later an orderly, male version of a candy striper who does heavy lifting, angryly told me to move the car. I fruitlessly searched for my aunt to no avail and returned to the car, the orderly returned spewing out expletives and telling me to move the car. I had just turned twelve at the time and my cousin was eleven. I pointed this out to the orderly—he didn’t care and just went on ranting.
This was the first time I ever drove a car and it was a manual transmission! The streets were narrow and I kept drifting side-to-side narrowly missing side swiping parked vehicles while trying to locate a parking spot. On the second time around the hospital I heard honking, upon looking up I saw that I had drifted into oncoming traffic and quickly yanked the wheel to the right. As I pasted the vehicle I saw the shock on the drivers face, he couldn’t believe what he just saw, seeing two young boys driving a car.
I told my cousin that I needed to concentrate on driving and for him to search for a parking spot. After a while we spotted a parking lot at a corner market and pulled in, a sign proclaimed No Hospital Parking—we parked there anyway. We were outlaws breakin’ the law!
Charlie Don’t Backpack
July 28-September 6, 1975 I went on a backpacking trip along the Pacific Crest Trail across the state of Washington—531 miles. The trip began with five people: myself, a co-worker Becky Hansell, her brother Chris Bowen, and Robin and Dan who were there to return the auto home.We started at Stevenson, on the southern border of Washington. On the second day we meet a lone backpacker, Jeff Booth an elementary school teacher from Portland, Oregon. Robin and Dan said their good byes and turned back to head home to Utah. Jeff asked if he could join us the rest of the trip, realizing that it wasn’t safe for him to travel alone. Jeff stayed with us most of the way until we reached the N. Cascades Hwy, near the Canadian border, there he moved ahead alone at a swifter pace so he could meet his ride and get back home in time for the start of the school year.
What I’m about to relate is one of many adventures we had on this trip, highlighted in yellow on map, this being the scariest:
When we reached the city of Snoqualmie Pass, it had been approximately two weeks into our trip, we decided to chip in and get a room in a small motel so we could each take a hot shower. We watched the news as we waited our turn for use of the shower. A macabre story was on the news, months earlier some humans skulls were found not far from where we currently where. Police were organizing a search to try to locate more evidence of the crimes. At the time it was unknown that these were victims of Ted Bundy, who had already moved to our home state of Utah.It is common for passing hikers to greet one another near the trailheads. As one gets further away and deeper into the wilds, you stop and have conversations with the people you meet.
After a short side trip to North Bend we were back on the trail, two days passed and as those of you who have done any backpacking know—your mind can really play tricks on you, especially when alone. We were spread out, walking our individual pacing, anywhere from two to three miles between each individual. Jeff in the lead, followed by me, then Chris, and Becky bringing up the rear.
I had just walked out into a clearing roughly three hundred yards long, at the same time another backpacker emerged at the opposite end. When we where a hundred feet away he veered off the trail, some forty feet, to his left. As we passed I called out a hello, he just looked at me not saying a word—a chill went down my spine as I looked into his eyes. He was Charles Manson’s identical twin! I picked up my pace, when I reached the trees I increased my pace even more. Before I knew it I was running!Snoqualmie Pass was a food pickup point. We would mail our food General Delivery, to ourselves, to various local post offices along the trail. We weighed our packs on a rock scale at a local rock shop. At this point on the trail, our packs weight had decreased to 35-45 lbs. Jeff’s pack now weighed 85 lbs., Chris and mine weighed 80 lbs., and Becky’s came in at 50 lbs.
All sorts of thoughts ran through my head, “Is he after me, is Jeff dead, Oh, my God, Becky!” I must have ran for 10-15 minutes now thinking I’ve got to turn back, then I saw Jeff running towards me and shouting, “Did you see that guy, I know he’s the killer!” Together we ran towards Chris. Soon we saw Chris running towards us. We all agreed he was the killer and ran to Becky’s rescue. This time another 10-15 minutes passed, we feared the worst that we would find Becky’s lifeless body, but then we saw her running towards us. She was shouting, “It’s the killer, it’s the killer!”
We doubled our pace to put as much ground between the killer and us! We had a plan. No stopping for lunch today, run, run! Time passed and the sun was starting to set, we needed a safe campsite fast. We headed up the side of the mountain, up the scree field, this way we could hear anyone approaching our camp. A mile up the mountain’s side we found a terraced area, no tents tonight—too visible. No hot meal tonight, can’t chance it, our gas stoves may give away our location. Chris volunteered for the first watch, the rest of us kept our Swiss Army knives close at hand.
It took another day before we relaxed and could laugh at ourselves.
Art Treasure Hunt
I spent the weekend searching for art treasure with my two youngest children, Aiden and Tara. Although we were not lucky enough to find any treasure, we did have a fantastic time!
July 24th I read an article in the local paper, Salt Lake Tribune, about a Minneapolis-based artist William Hessian who travels across the U.S. hiding miniture artwork in city parks. His art tour brought him to Salt Lake where ten pieces of art were hidden throughout the city. We followed the clues, got close, but no luck.
The above photo shows (left to right) Kelsey Hessian, William Hessian, Aiden and Tara, and another family at Liberty Park.
Ted blowed it up!
A recent conversation with my co-workers included the subject of layoffs and firings, being the oldest in the group I had the most stories to relate. Here is the funniest:
Working in a small advertising and design market, it is common to be laid off every three to five years as clients jumped ship and moved on. But on one occasion I was let go because I refused to fall on the sword and take the blame for the incompetence of the new marketing director.
I was working at a small research and consulting firm that catered to the IT industry. A year earlier the company had merged with another small firm on the east coast, the company kept both offices intact and had some duplicate positions. After this first year the marketing director in our Salt Lake office quit, he had had enough of the marketing director in the Virginia office. This left me exposed and now working directly with Little Napoleon--as we referred to him. On two occasions I was made aware of him trying to blame me for his costly screw-ups, who knows what else he blamed on me.
After speaking with the HR manager I met with Little Napoleon and tried to resolve our working relationship, boy was I naïve, he soon convinced upper management to fire me. I cleaned out my things and he escorted me out the door. The following day I called the IT director and asked permission to use a computer for transferring some personal data that I had on large file disks onto smaller disks that would work on my equipment at home. The IT director said it would be fine and when I arrived he just left me to my work. Napoleon saw me at the computer in the office and went ballistic, after an argument with the IT director, he permitted me to continue—but he first wanted to see everything on the disks and sat next to me until I completed my task. I was fuming! He walked me to my car, smiled, and put out his hand and wished me luck. I looked at his hand and said,“You’ve got to be kidding.”
A month earlier the office had put on its yearly conference at a luxury resort hotel in San Diego, CA. At the conference, amongst one of Little Napoleon’s many screw-ups, he misplaced the prizes that were to be given out to attendees in a drawing. A few months later the hotel staff discovered the missing box and mailed it to the Salt Lake office. The Salt Lake office forwarded it to Napoleon in the Virginia office--removing the hotel’s return address but forgetting to replace it with the Salt Lake return address. When Napoleon received it unannounced and thinking it was from me, he panicked and called the police claiming he had received a bomb in the mail.
A bomb squad’s policy is not to mess with it, first blow the thing up so one could safely examine the contents. After doing their job, they told Napoleon that it appeared to be some clothing. They had blown up ten bomber jackets--what irony.
Seeing the humor, I wanted to make a Christmas card that referenced the bombing incident. I thought better not to, Little Napoleon might see it and fire the person who called and related the incident to me.
July 4th
Sherman tank crushing a Honda Prelude on July 4, 2008. I drove my parents and my two youngest children to a private July 4th celebration. The host collects military vehicles (he has seven plus warehouses full) and every year he puts on a big shindig--an all day celebration, and invites veterans and their families to attend. My dad served in N. Africa, Sicily, and Italy during WWII. Earned four bronze battle stars, was awarded the Silver Star at the battle of the Rapidio River, Cassino, Italy and turned down two purple hearts. This and other characteristics of my father made him my number one hero while growing up.
MONKEY TWINS
In Mayan mythology, a story is told in the Popul Vuh about twin brothers Hunbatz (one monkey) and Hunchouén (one artisan):
By nature these two sons were very wise, and great was their wisdom; on earth they were soothsayers of good disposition and good habits. All the arts were taught to Hunbatz and Hunchouén, the sons of Hun-Hunahpú and Xbaquiyalo. They were flautists, singers, shooters with blowguns, painters, sculptors, jewelers, silversmiths; these were Hunbatz and Hunchouén.
Eventually, Hunbatz and Hunchouén are lured up into a tree and changed into monkeys by their illegitimate stepbrothers Hunahpú and Xbalanqué—the Hero Twins. Hunbatz and Hunchouén are revered by the Mayans as the patrons of the arts.
Neways—Safety T-shirt, final design
This is the final design, client requested a fisherman on the front and a fish on the back--this was one of two versions shown to the client. The other being a different style of illustration, executed by Steve Keele.
Stop the Insanity!
Fish Tag Friday has taken off across the country (See CNN article). This insidious game is right up there with cat juggling for its cruelty to the animal world.
The safe design
I was struggling with the concept, so I took the easy road and illustrated a fish. Mark Osborne gave me the concept of the fish rejecting the hook for the small fish.
Bill Bass Sez, "Think Safety!"
This idea came to me one morning, when everyone in the creative department joined in singing this 1984 ditty by Barnes & Barnes first heard on the Dr. Demento Show.
Animal Rights Cause: Stop Fish Tag Fridays
In the spirit of Steve Martin, the Three Stooges, and Howie Mandel. This is one of my favorites, but I know it is over the head of most people and will be the first to be rejected.
Don't Throw Caution To the Wind
My favorite, you have to actually think to understand the visual. This is a melding of the phrase, Don’t throw caution to the wind, and various safety symbols.
Anatomy of a concept
Neways Human Resources asked the Creative Services department to come up with a t-shirt design for their upcoming safety fair, they supplied us with two concepts: Got milk? and Hooked on Safety. The project was open to everyone in the department to participate. This diagrams shows the different directions I took in trying to resolve the problem. HR specifically asked that a fish be incorporated into the Hooked on Safety concept. Mark Osborne gave me the idea of a fish rejecting the hook in favor of the small fish. And John Tracy gave me the idea of incorporating Ron White’s famous line: You can’t fix stupid.
Neways—Insight Newsletter Jul/Aug 2008
Editor: Christopher Bigelow; Illustration (building rendering): Steve Keele
The Danger of Plate Glass
A Western Tanager stuck our building (see image at left) and was killed, here is an excerpt of an article on the dangers of glass buildings:
Over one billion birds strike windows in the U.S. every year. It is rapidly becoming the most significant contributor to the overall decline in bird populations. Birds don't see or understand windows and reflections. Instead, they see images that signal a flyway -- and they fly into the glass.
The expanding use of curtains of glass to enclose buildings will cause bird collisions to grow to catastrophic numbers. And with this comes an increasing concern about the problem. For architects, designers, building owners and managers, residents and tenants, bird collisions are an evolving business and environmental issue.
—Birds & Buildings Forum
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