I want to thank the little people...

The Springfield Advertising Club hosted the 30th annual ADDY Awards Saturday, February 21. I had 4 entries, 2 from work at the City of Springfield and 2 of my own freelance work. The City, of course, did not pay for my personal entries in case you were keeping close tabs on Springfield's financial problems. Anyway, it turns out that 3 of my entries won ADDYs! My wife sat patiently through nearly 3 hours of awards mostly given to Noble & Assoc. She was such a trooper. We decided next year I should enter stuff in the categories they announce at the beginning of the ceremony.

The piece that won for the City was a logo I made for the Brownfields program. It is an EPA partnership-type of program that can assist developers clean up abandoned gas stations or other industrial waste land to make it safe for new construction. Like recycling the land. Hence the arrows and building in the background. The "B" is for Brownfields of course.


Another winning entry was an illustration of Sufjan Stevens (Soof-yawn Steev-inz) that I did as a part of my self-promotion packaging. He is my favorite indie folk/rock musician. He plays banjo, guitar, piano, clarinet and probably every other instrument known to man and comes up with these extravagant arrangements that pay homage to Michigan, "Illinoize" and swans with some religious undertones. Or overtones, I don't know. In his "Illinoize" tour, he was onstage wearing wings and some kind of boyscout uniform while his orchestra of "Illinoizemakers" wore butterfly wings. I painted him with those wings communing with nature/Creation, specifically a robin which is Michigan's state bird. I use this illustrated portrait on postcards that I send to magazines. I think it's time for another mailing.


The third winning entry was my stationery I made for mailing out with these promotional cards. I hand-painted the edges of some paper and envelopes and worked my "M" logo into it. Of course my business cards were also a part of the package.


Now that you see all these together, can you tell what my favorite color is? Maybe I should branch out to other colors of the rainbow. Anyway, it was a successful evening and I expect to be doing even better (and colorful) work in the coming year, so stay tuned.