Time stands still for no man

Having been in the business of graphic design for the better part of 25 years, it takes a poke from the past to reveal what other course my life might have taken had I stuck to illustration versus Graphic Design. One thing is for sure, I wouldn't be financially where I am today.

As Summer was still in full bloom, I had a call from a man I once illustrated comics for (Jim McPherson of Phantacea Comics), asking if I still had the cover art from one of the series I completed in the 70's. The voice sounded the same, but after 30 years I couldn't fathom how he could still be doing this, other than for love, because he never made a heck of lot of money from the endeavour.

To be fair he always managed to pay his artists, if not huge bucks, a reasonable amount for the work we did. It also helped that I was only 23 years old and didn't require much, other than the staples and of course the rent, which my young partner at the time manged to scrape together each month.

So back to the request from Jim. All my illustrations from those early days lay packaged and hidden from view in our basement, so I told him I'd look and get back to him the next day.

I had every illustration except that one, then remembered an illustrator peer at the time, wanted to purchase it, which I gladly accepted. Over and above staples, a few beers on a Friday evening were always a treat.

Jim was slightly taken aback at my discovery, until I mentioned I could (for a cost, much greater than the original 1970's price) recreate the art on my mac using photoshop and a very course greyscale version of the cover Jim offered as a template.

Three days later, I presented the outcome to applause and was handed a cheque that would have kept both my partner and I in food and staples for a month back in the 70's.

You can review the artwork below, and if anyone wants to buy the original I'm sorry, I can't remember the illustrator peer I sold it too, but should you want a copy of this illustration just give me a call.

Getting to know you through this ubiquitous means

For those of you who don't know me, my name is Ian Bateson, Creative Director, at Baseline Type and Graphics, here in Vancouver, BC, Canada.

Having spent the last few days writing long and laborious RFP's, calling existing clients for job opportunities and generally getting tired of reading the bad news about the economy, I thought it was time to look into the growing phenomena of social networking and how it might inform clients about what we've been doing, possibly generate interesting leads and perhaps help generate some work for Baseline.

Knowing that once you start down this path, one has to attempt to keep it reasonably timely (not just once a year when things are slow) for updates or new items. So I will write this down in my day timer. Yes I still use pen and paper, haven't migrated yet to hand helds, other than a cell phone.

So this first blog is something of an exploration for me, and I thought the easy way to begin would be through a show-and-tell of our work, with an introduction to some of our identity design solutions for various clients, with links to our web site for more information. I know, blatent advertising, but you have to use the tools at hand, and I promise to post more interesting subjects in the future. Bare with me while I learn.