Monday, July 23, 2012

New Banner And Booth Configurations

A while ago I showed y'all a few things - a teaser for my new booth banner and a look at my new booth frame in an incarnation that was too tall to use. Well, today I'll show you the finished version of each of these.

There were a few goals to meet with the banner design:

First, I want to give people a context for what they are seeing. At either end of the banner the words "weaving" and "handwoven" appear.

Second, I want people to understand that this work is part of my lifestyle and my spiritual practice. I did not, however, want to conjure incorrect images of the large stone edifice that is often associated with the word monastery.

And tying this all together, I wanted to get people past the work itself and onto the reason why I do the work. I think this new banner will cause them to ask the questions that let me tell them the backstory. Remember my theory? I'm not just selling cloth. I'm selling the dream of a world where people live together in close-knit community and support themselves in the process. If they can't do it themselves at the moment, many people want to support others who are doing it.

And to get me from a set of goals to a full-fledged business identity package, I needed a real designer with experience in this sort of thing. Let me tell you a little about the designer, Carl Crossgrove. He's been my best friend for about 20 years and is primarily a type designer. He took my vague ideas and turned them into a concept. He then sketched the banner and modified it until it was precisely what I wanted. He designed a typeface that matched the mood with more nuance than I could have imagined and turned it over to me so that I can design business cards, hang tags, and labels with the new identity.

He is not looking for more logo and identity work, but if you'd like to see his latest type design you can find it here: http://www.linotype.com/6765/biome.html.

And yes, he is the friend who's recovering from heart surgery. He's doing really well.

Here are some images of the fantastic banner that he designed, including a custom typeface that needs a lot more work before it's ready for release to the public.

And here's the new booth, brought down to a reasonable height. You'll notice that the walls from my canopy fit it exactly. This was by design. I really like being able to zip up the walls at night. And why is there no ceiling? Because this booth is meant to be used indoors with constrained ceiling height. It just needs to hold lights, walls, and the banner. And, OK, this isn't quite how it will look at the shows. The overhang pipes have sleeves and there will be nice-looking spotlights strung between the pipes, pointing down onto the front racks.

Notice the extra foot of blank space on either end of the banner? This allows the same banner to wrap around an 8' booth without losing any of the design.

And here's the second new booth configuration. The booth is essentially the same size but the cantilevered awning is lower, the canopy is higher, and there's a solid ceiling. You'll notice that this is the same wraparound lighting rig that I configured for McMinnville this past Winter. Today I stitched up a tie-on awning to give me a little shade. As a bonus, the frame holds the banner up above the front edge of the canopy.

I'm not bothering to attach the walls and drapes because I've used them a lot and know they work. The goal with my tight schedule is just to build and test new stuff.

And with that, I'm finished building booths. I think that I've finally cycled through all of the booth configurations and built a booth for every need: indoor, outdoor, wind, rain, sun, 10x10, 8x8, 8x4, low ceilings, high ceilings, inline, corner, blah, blah, blah. Famous last words, right?

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