The Cornish Fair

The fair has always been a big part of my life. When you grow up in such a small town where there is usually nothing to do a three day fair is a BIG DEAL. Or at least to me it always was. Until the age of probably 10 or 11 I was just another fair-going bystander. I watched the spectacle; I wasn't the spectacle. The fair is where I joined the 4-H Horse Huggers. Chuckle if you must, but this group changed my life, a lot. Many people credit their elementary school teachers and coaches as early influences. For me, it was the volunteers and other 4-Hers. Because I joined that group I started riding horses; participated in county, state, and regional equine events; practiced my speaking, teamwork, and leadership skills at activities days; gained a wealth of knowledge about horses, their anatomy, their body processes and their language. I probably learned the bones of a horse's body before I learned those of the human body. But I digress. 

What I'm trying to say is that I have been a part of the fair and it has been a part of me for about eleven years now. Each year I have been involved at different levels an capacities from being a helper at the horse show, to riding in the horse show, working at the 4-H dairy booth, to being horse show secretary. I've even had many exhibits at the school ranging from floral, to garden, to photography. 

This year I will be/have/do:

-Horse show secretary

-Photos in the fair calendar from last years entries

-Photos entered in the fair

-Art show and sale poster contest entry

-Design the poster advertising the fair and the karaoke contest

This year has been different. It is the first year that I've really done design work for people other than myself, or my dad's business. I've done design since high school, since yearbook, really. 

My mom works with one of the fair directors. She told her about the poster contest. I had a concept as soon as I heard about it. This was at the end of February. Mind you, I put of actually working on it until the last week of school, so about April 21. It was due April 30. I hadn't worked with oil pastels in years, like since elementary school in art class. Those were the days when art to me was boring and dumb and I thought I couldn't do it. So my experience with oil pastels was limited to pushing down hard and pushing and pulling and scribbling on the paper until it broke. Hahahhahaha. Yeah, went for some different techniques this time. I finished the poster on the 28th or 29th at 7:00am and ended up having to mail it home. I later found out that they wanted a photocopy of it. WHY COULDN'T THEY HAVE TOLD ME SOONER? I don't really know. All of the entries were to hang in the town offices for the month of May for the town's residents to vote on. I don't know the results. Actually, May isn't over so there aren't any yet. I'm going home this weekend, maybe I should stop by and vote for myself. Or Pedro. 

Any who, fair director, posters yeah. The director also said that she needed someone to make a poster for the fair and for the design contest. When I went home about a month ago I met with her about what she wanted. She wanted something "eye catching." Honestly, I couldn't remember any of the posters from the previous years and asked to see them. She didn't have them on hand but ended up emailing them to me. I will describe them as this, red and black text, no pictures. My thought was wooooow. I was unsure of the task but knew I could do it. I figured, hey, they can't get any worse. So over the last couple of weeks I've been working on the Karaoke poster off and on. She just wants them to her by the end of June. This has allowed me to work at a leisurely rate. But I want to get them to her sooner rather than later in the event that she wants anything changed. So far the project is coming along good. I like to call them portfolio builders. Work I can show. Things I can add to my website. Posters that will actually be printed and used to advertise the event. This is my new level of involvement in the fair this year. 

Also, since I am staying in Burlington this summer I am hoping to get some great shots of the lake, some sunset photos, maybe the river. Any good photo ops really. 

One more thing. I am hoping the photo lab on campus is open this summer. I'm hoping that I can finish up all of my film and photo paper. 

Bandwagon

I've finally jumped onto the blogspot bandwagon. Actually I thought I had one but apparently I was wrong. Either way it would have been an old account. I've used livejournal for years and still do but why the sudden change of heart? A few friends got blogspots to document their travels, to talk about the conferences they go to, to spy on the people that document their travels and talk about the conferences they go to, you get the idea. So, where do I fit in. Probably one of three categories. I'll give you a hint, I don't plan on traveling or attending any conferences anytime soon. So I'm here to spy. But I'm also here to talk about my new website www.persnicketycreative.com .

What is www.persnicketycreative.com?

www.persnicketycreative.com is my personal creative portfolio site including photography, illustration, graphic arts, eventually web design stuff, etc. It is not in it's finished state but neither is any website (or that's the way it should be). I actually created this version for a final project for my introduction to web design class.

The future of my site:

In the future I hope to add more portfolio pieces to the site as well as change up the design a bit to better reflect myself as a designer as my style changes. Also since I'm a marketing major I hope to use my site to learn the google analytics interface, as well as work on some SEO. I will admit, this is going to be a challenge as it is a 100% flash site. This means I will probably have to do some research on alt tags and other web marketing fun things. But for now it's a start.

My current experiments:

I've had analytics tracking the site for a week. I sent the site to my mother, put a link in my aim profile and posted it on facebook. It told me where people were looking at it and where they were coming from. Most people are still coming straight to the site, as it can't be found in search engines. Since such a small number of people have access to it right now I've been able to narrow down who exactly has viewed it including one of my roommates from Midway and another roommate from here at Champlain. This was easy based on geographical location - Providence R.I. and Los Angeles C.A.

For tonight I think that will be all. I need to find my bed then sleep in it, for a long, long time. I need my rest, I have an interview for a marketing internship tomorrow