random thoughts – Day 1,689 – (Friday) – good day

This was the second of two days this week that included the fun part of marketing. Today's edition featured the graphic designer and another colleague and I as we stood around the work table analyzing potential designs for two projects. It was a smaller scale of when we did the same thing on Wednesday with the first set of design drafts and the full team. Today, we looked at the refinements that were proposed the other day and came up with a few more tweaks.

We discussed the various colors and the extent to which they drew attention to the message (or not). We analyzed the various font treatments and the weight of the text and the spacing. We looked at how the imagery in some versions led the eye into the text. This sort of exercise was done regularly at my old agency job in Tennessee and I've missed it, so it’s been great collaborating like this this week. 

Since the pandemic and then the hybrid schedules, a lot of our creative discussions are handled via email or chat messages from our remote locations. It can be efficient, but it’s just not the same as in person conversations. Efficiency can be isolating, and there is no way we could have captured all the nuances we discussed this week over email. Impossible, really.

Merrimack Street, 5:05 pm.

Another nice thing that happened today was that the three of us onsite in our suite were invited to a pizza lunch in the executive office downstairs with our colleagues on the sales side of our business unit. One of our team members in that group finished the requirements for her degree today. The pizzas and salad were from my favorite pizza purveyor and were predictably delicious. It was a treat sitting in a conference room chatting about all manner of non-work things like New York City, traffic stops, classes we liked in college, and pizza.

At home, the street is dry since the water department crew did work yesterday. It doesn’t seem they are finished yet because there is gravel and safety cones were there used to be asphalt, but the situation is certainly improved.

Today was a good day. Five out of five stars. Even walking in the dark to the garage after 5:00 was nice with the white lights shining in the trees and reflecting on the sidewalk, and the lights glowing in the restaurant windows. Not as nice as the afternoon brightness and sunshine of 5:00 on a June day of course, but still nice in its own different way.