all my clients should be this woofy

Wound up working through the weekend. More cleaning / simplifying the soon to-be-moved office, art directing a photo shoot, frantic content wrangling for the folks who run the St. Louis Film Festival and planning meeting with Jeff for JJ’s Clubhouse and Bar.

I guess everyone in this business has a pet client… If that’s the case, then Jeff would be mine.

I met Jeff shortly after he moved to St. Louis and I started going out about eight years ago. A still naive 20-something, I had only recently discovered that being a homo didn’t mean you had to be 110lbs, hairless and effeminate.

I would harbor a puppy-dog crush on him for years to come.

It was late in 1999 when Jeff pulled me aside during the happy hour he was bar-tending and told me he was intending to open his own bar in St. Louis and asked me if I would do the logo.

I was flattered, not to mention all twitter-pated – so of course I accepted the assignment.

I enlisted the help of my extremely talented friend George Shea who’s the illustrator / cartoonist who provided the source sketches which I used to develop the final logo. (The end result was a layered vector file which I can manipulate on the fly and adorn and alter with my limited illustrating abilities).

Now in the forth year of servicing the account – we’ve got the bar’s marketing down to damn near a science and Jeff’s become what I would consider a respected friend. Every two weeks there’s a new logo theme created… An ad for the bar rags goes out… In-bar posters get printed… table tents for the bar…. etc.

Today we met and went over the event schedule for 2004 and knocked around some ideas for some new things to try out.

There’s something terribly gratifying about having a client who puts so much faith in your abilities.

I’m thankful to have the account – and Jeff’s friendship…

I’m thankful I don’t blog.