Sleeping Giants

After being so intense last week about getting a product out the door, yesterday I decided to play -- to reinforce some of the drawing and web design lessons I learned. (That qualifies as "play" here on Planet Susan.)

When Pat D and I started putting our heads together about her daughter's business, she called the two of us the "Sleeping Giants" -- a reference to those glorious days of the Eighties when we collaborated so creatively around Pat Drum Aerobics and to the vast stores of undiscovered and untapped energies still contained within our post-rat-race lives. (Or maybe she meant we were just a couple of lazy bums who would rather have our afternoon toddies than get jobs.)

So... playing... now I give you "The Sleeping Giants" [be sure to mouseover the image] -- an invented consulting firm, not exactly fake but not open for business either. They look like a pair of odalisks -- those lounging women you see in classic paintings. But I looked up the definition and "odalisks" are concubines in a harem -- definitely NOT what I had in mind. Being slaves to no master, the Giants are anti-odalisks, women in charge of their own destiny.

Funny, there was an article in the New York Times Magazine yesterday about a related subject: "False Endorsement."

There is no shortage of logos in the world, no dearth of brands striving for consumer allegiance and no chance that the creation of new brands and logos will cease. In fact there’s an interesting subset of brands and logos that don’t bother with what seems like a crucial component: an actual product, service or company. Consider the Weyland-Yutani Corporation. It’s part of the fictional universe depicted in the 1979 film “Alien” and its sequels; Nostromo, the spaceship freighter in the first movie, is a Weyland-Yutani vessel. The company doesn’t do much in the way of branding in, you know, reality. But as it turns out, it’s possible to buy yourself a Weyland-Yutani T-shirt, or even a Nostromo T. It also turns out many people have. [emphasis mine]

Hmmm.... wanna buy a t-shirt????

11.19.07

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