Category: Reflections

Happy New Year, everyone!

2009 is a special year for Zerflin. In May, it will be 10 years since I did my first design, making Zerflin a decade old.

The advantage to running a small company is that we’re nimble enough to change with the times. The world of a graphic designer is changing at light-speed.

Look for lots of new things this year. We’re secretly planning the launch of several new projects. One thing you’ll see immediately, is us keeping up with our friend Heidi Durrow‘s new years resolution of posting once a day on this journal. I’m putting a twist on it though, by putting either a design or a piece of art up every day. I’m still planning on writing about life in general, my thoughts and my family (speaking of which, Arion is still not here yet), so you may get MORE than a post a day in some cases. If you get overwhelmed, check out The Split. It will help you out.

I’m working out the bugs of the image displaying in the blog posts. If they look at all distorted to you, let me know. I’m working with a few developers to get them fix.

Thank you for reading, for being our clients, and for supporting us! You guys make this worth while.

~Benjamin

Hat tip to my friend Matt Watier for sending me this one (it’s his true story).

So, you’re in traffic, and in front of you is a guy in a white Porsche.

His license plate reads FFFKNT.

What does it mean?

Hint: The guy is probably a geek, and if you can figure this one out, so are you.

I had a pretty interesting weekend a couple weeks ago.

That Friday, (the 5th) was Merrick Towle‘s state of the agency meeting, we all got up bright and early, met for breakfast, and stayed through lunch. The bulk of it was Glenn Towle, one of the two partners, giving us a financial overview of how the agency was doing (which is always interesting to understand). In between segments, all of the departments did presentations; most of them funny.

After we got out, I drove back to Baltimore, finished up writing some contracts with Tamika for The Apple Tree Experience (a Christian band out of Harrisburg that Ray hooked us up with), packed up, bought a bottle of Yellow Tail, and headed north.
I got to the Mantis Collective just in time for the opening of the Frameless show I was in.
The space was small, the walls bare, but it quickly filled up with people. I got to meet the two directors of the gallery, Andrew Guth and Tara Chickey.
I was surprised to see my friend Jocelyn Mathewes‘ work there. I had sent her the link for the call for entries, but didn’t know she had submitted. A couple very large prints over open-shutter light-art pieces hung on the wall.
I wandered around looking at the work; sipping wine and munching on the bread and hummus they had provided. I was starving, of course, not having eaten anything and it now being close to 8:30. Other than the cordial welcome from the gallery owners, I was mostly avoided by the crowd, and began to feel out of place. I missed Tamika.
To my surprise, Jamel McMillian showed up!
We talked and laughed for nearly an hour and a half, catching up on where all the rest of the boys from Nativity were, old stories, and what he was up to now. He’s finishing up highschool, and is getting ready to become a Bio Pre-Med student. “About 10 more years of school!” he laughed, but said he was prepared for it.
Later on, I got another surprise; Ray Chung and my old friend from ISA/MuKappa Brett Davis also showed up! Brett was up from Louisiana where he is working, and was staying with Ray for a week. It was good to see them both.

I drove up to Chan’s for a late chicken wing and chow fun dinner, and sat listening to The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (I borrowed it from the library on Fievel Mousekewitz‘s suggestion; it’s really good).

Our friend Chad Patterson had been nice enough to put me up for the weekend. I settled in on his pull-out futon and we watched Wanted (good movie, very violent). It was the first time I’d seen anything on Bluray, and with his enormous LCD screen, the detail was incredible. Of course, as an audiophile, Chad was keen to point out all the additional surround sound features bluray has. It was all very impressive.

I slept well, and in the morning Chad and I hung out for a bit. He is a turntable king, and actually has a program in which he hooks his turntables up to his mac, and is able to mix and scratch mp3s… Using his turntables as “controllers”. It was so cool to watch.

I met Ray, Brett Trout, and Brett’s bandmate Jake Kelly at Wray’s in Lemoyne. Brett and Jake have formed a band together, called The Apple Tree Experience. I’m going to be doing all their promotional materials, and they wanted to do a photo shoot.
We went up on the abandoned railroad bridge that goes from Lemoyne to Harrisburg. Dispite it being freezing cold with a stiff wind, the boys were good natured, and in between ducking back into the subaru for warmth, we got a lot of good shots in. You can read more about the shoot and see some more of the photos here.

I still hadn’t eaten anything, so after the shoot, I drove over to the Jumbo Buffet & Grill, one of my favourite Chinese restaurants (mostly for their oddly-fresh-for-an-inland-restaurant seafood). Driving by Huggins Printing brought back old memories. I sometimes wonder if my old boss, Chris, is stll mad at me…
Mid-way through my meal, it began to snow.
Flurries blew about rather innocently, and then started coming down in great cascades.
I hopped on I-83, and about 20 minutes down the road, everything turned to a standstill. The road itself was invisible. Sheets of snow blanketed everything, and my windsheild wipers were barely fast enough to keep it clean.
Fifteen. That’s how many accidents I saw on the way home. SUVs, compact cars, hummers, tractor trailers… Even my own nimble subaru skidded all 4 tires at one point. It was like trying to drive a zamboni.
Made it home safe and sound… Though the hour and a half long trip turned into five hours on the road!

Sadly, I knew this day would come…

Peter (Spam) Jones, former drummer for Pagoda and beloved friend, is selling his drum kit.

Now YOU can own a priceless piece of Pagoda history. From March of 2003 until the band’s disbandment, the cream-coloured kit was source of many badum-chings and overly used as the only metronome the band had. It has been the jumpoff for misplaced energy by short guitarist. It scaled the rusty fire escape at The Blue Star, and was a star at The Rusty Nail.

This set was loved. In near perfect condition (having been chauffered around in the nicest vehicle the band possesed) the kit is ready for a new owner. At $400, it’s a bargain. A steal. A horrible tragedy of mankind.

To find more about Spam, read this.

To see pictures of the infamous drum kit and it’s beneficent owner, look at these.

To find out who the heck Pagoda is and what their music sounds like, check this out.

To purchase this magnificent drum set, contact Spam directly.

My neighbors’ car was torched Tuesday night.

At about 1am, I was finishing up some work on some Christmas presents. Tamika was up with me, doing some photo editing for Lisa Locker’s wedding. We both smelled gasoline, and after checking to make sure my motorcycle was ok, I ran outside to discover one of my neighbors’ cars ablaze.

Michael Dowling used to live on Augusta (an adjacent street) but after the landlord of the dope house cleaned everyone out, he offered to rent the place to Michael in return for some handyman work and a nominal rent. Mike is a former bad apple, was locked up for a while, but got back together with his girlfriend about a year ago and has turned over a new leaf in attempts to be a better father to his kids. He enrolled himself in a couple programs and through that got a job.

His girlfriend has two kids (one of them his), and we’ve been helping them out in any way we could.

We sold the Mercury my dad gave us to Mike, who was able to fix it up in a matter of weeks and resell it for a profit. We were also planning on selling our old Saturn to him too (he’s already started working on it).

Michael used the money he earned from our Mercury to buy another ca;, this time an 89 Grand Marquis with a Police Interceptor engine in it. He was $75 away from getting a new front grill, the last piece he was missing.

Earlier this week Mike repaired a scooter of another neighbor, charging him $80. The scooter was later stolen, and the man demanded his money back. Mike refused, and suspects the man had something to with the fire.

The fire had just been lit when I got out there, but I didn’t see anyone around. Mike had put a tarp over top with a cinder block on it to weigh it down. The whole curbside was in flames. I pounded on Mike’s door. No answer. I tried tugging at the tarp and was able to get some of it off, but the fire was too big. I went back to pounding on Mikes door. Nothing. I ran into our house and called 911.

Mike finally woke up. The flames were reaching as high as two stories at this point, coming dangerously close to Mikes front porch. In these row houses, with everything all connected, if one house went, they all might.

The firemen were there within 10 minutes. They doused the car, and then got Mike to open the doors and doused the inside, which billowed smoke.

Mike was torn up. He had been working so hard to stay clean and to support his family. And yet, this happened. On top of all this, Michelle, his girlfriend, is in the hospital with her infant son who is having seizures.

He gave me a call today. CSI determined the fire was indeed set on purpose, and even got some gassy fingerprints on the roof of the car. Mike is determined to fix the car. He plans on gutting it and getting it on the road. He says he’s not going to let this get him down.

I think Tamika and are just going to give the Saturn to them.

It’s raining today. Water is coming down in sheets, drenching everything. It started yesterday, let up for while, and the came down harder as I went to bed.

There is not too much I like more, than to snuggle under a thick quilt listening to a storm drumming on the rooftop. Tamika stayed up late last night to do some work twisting her hair, and when she came up and crawled into bed, she lay her hand softly on my head, running her fingers through my hair.

It almost made me late for work today, I slept so good.

And even then, when I shrugged on my favourite jacket and the cold air hit me full force, I still liked the rain. It roared against the windsheild as I drove to work, senting tides of water up from passing trucks.