Tuesday, March 23, 2010

April Story Slam Poster: Good Intentions

Latest West Chester Story Slam poster for April 2010. If you're in the West Chester area, swing by for a beer and a listen or, if you're adventurous, tell a story. At the very least you'll end up on the Youtube (that's me in the very back. You can't see me but I'm having a Victory Hop Devil.)

I actually drew this flower guy the opposite but he didn't fit on the poster that way. So I flipped in Photoshop which beats the heck out of the alternative of redrawing him the opposite way.

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Sunday, January 17, 2010

West Chester Story Slam: Love Hurts


The February West Chester Story Slam poster for the theme Love Hurts.

The first story slam even of the year last week was terrific - really impressive how many people turned out and how many had the gumption to get up and tell a story. Here's Shirley Landis Van Scoyk's winning story for January's theme, Embarrassing Moments.

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Thursday, December 17, 2009

West Chester Story Slam: Embarrassing Moments




Jim Breslin, local Chester County writer and founder of the West Chester Story Slam contacted me through Twitter the other night asking if I'd be interested in helping put together a promo for the first public Story Slam event in January in West Chester. He wanted fliers/posters to put up around West Chester promoting the event.

Drawing and designing late in the night, I tried a couple of different sketches and settled on this guy. Though he's a little 'fangy' and Star Trek'y I think he does the job of showing a dude in the spotlight telling his tale.

Funny that the theme of the event is "Embarrassing Moments". After Jim posted the poster around the web, I went about writing this post and did a spit-take on it as I pondered my brother, the freelance financial copy writer's reaction to the piece. I noticed that I had misspelled "embarrassing" as "embarassing". A quick fix and the original is now a collector's item.

I'm really looking forward to the inaugural slam for 2010 -- from a watching perspective. Make sure to get to Ryan's Pub early enough for a bite to eat and to get a good seat. In the meantime, look out for Jim with a bag full of fliers and a brush with a bucket of paste.

[Diamond pattern background courtesy of bittbox's free textures. QRCode inspired by Tikaro and West Chester's Barcode Building.]

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Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Scene Gazing on Gay Street in West Chester

I was standing outside Taylor's Music in West Chester on Saturday while my son was inside learning the nuances of the solo in Stairway to Heaven, I enjoyed a cold iced tea from Nick's Cafe and watched the world stroll by in the summer heat. There were pockets of twentysomethings on a pub crawl complete with t-shirts heading toward Jitters.

This girl -- not on the pub crawl -- was walking along alone at a hurried pace.  The look in her eyes said she had either seen too much of something or had seen something for the very first time and was deep in thought -- sorting it out, trying to make sense of it.

Her thousand-yard-stare grabbed my attention enough to make me snap this cellphone shot real quick. She made no indication whether she heard the electronic shutter sound the phone makes -- didn't change her pace, didn't flinch; no reaction to the flash going off full in her face. She walked on by.

I turned my head to see her continue West on Gay Street then take a left at the end of the block on Darlington.

A shadow distracted me. I looked down to see the iced tea-to-ice ratio in my cup was way out of proportion. Memo to myself: next time ask them to ease up on the ice at Nick's.

I looked up and returned to my street gazing, East on Gay.

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