For a change, I am posting first thing after I wake up rather than last thing before I go to sleep. It is noon. My sleep has been a bit off kilter lately, and taking a very deep nap sorta got me in trouble the other day, so I need to start thinking about getting everything balanced there. The problem with this blogging schedule is that, except for yummy morning breath, nothing has happened to me yet upon which I wish to comment.
OK, how’s this:
A couple of months ago, I began talking with a man who is trying to bring a certain product to market. It is a product I wouldn’t mind owning, myself, and at the time, I thought I wouldn’t mind having a financial stake in it, either, so our conversations expanded even after I found out that his company is sort of an organizational and marketing disaster. No problem, I thought. Even though I have my own business that takes all of my attention and is probably expanding to the point where it will require me to develop another entire brain, and even though I’m trying to finish two books and have ideas for four more, and even though my little dog is going through some time- and resource-consuming health issues that may require us to sue her previous vet for malpractice, and even though I’m on the board of a local organization and have suddenly found myself spearheading a neighborhood beautification project . . . let me just fix you and your company to the point that you at least appear viable, at which time I will be considered invested and you can give me millions of dollars after you are successful.
We started with logo, since his previous one had been done in Microsoft Word and everyone who has seen it teases him about it. Indeed, it is currently the most ridiculous logo I have ever seen, and that includes Verizon’s. So I sat him down for an hour and had him tell me his vision for a logo, which was as banal and listless as his current actual logo, but I ran with it, paying more attention to what he said he hoped to accomplish with it (the feeling, the demographic it was to attract, etc.) and came up with some pretty damned good stuff, if I do say so.
He sent me a quick email about how, he didn’t know why, but none of it appealed to him.
Then I went back to the drawing board and said, OK, let me give you EXACTLY what you asked for so you can see how stupid it looks, then you will be ready to move off in a different direction. And once I started, I saw how I could incorporate some of his ideas and make it, if not brilliant and unique, at least something about as workable as 99% of the other logos out there.
Nope.
Then I sent him some more of my own ideas, one of which was probably spot on and the other two would be more appropriate for a more visionary client. I also sent him one that managed to inadvertently reinvent BP’s new logo, which is really quite clever the more I think of it--which is of course why I ended up stumbling upon the same idea in a different way.
He didn’t even reply to my email.
OK, so fuck you, right? I don’t know why I even bothered, especially for someone who had shown plenty of idealism but no clear vision. The first time I met him, he was wearing moderately bright green pants and a clashing green shirt, so it’s not like we’re talking about someone with a great deal of insight about public perception. I imagine I got carried away with my usual obsessions of trying to fix other people’s disasters and also getting in on the ground floor of something big so I can stop worrying about my house and car getting repossessed . . . but of course these are all energies that are better invested in my own projects so THEY will be that successful one day.
(None of this is to say that if Steve Jobs calls tomorrow on my iPhone, which I waited in line all day to purchase upon its release, and says he is IN LOVE with the idea I presented below and wants to fly me out to Cupertino right away and make me a vice president at AAPL that I will not go running.)
