My Grandfather, bird seed, and a scurry of squirrels

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Anyone who ever met and talked to my Grandfather, no matter how brief the encounter, can likely attest to one thing. He loved to tell stories. Often the same ones, over and over again. So in order to say goodbye, it’s only fitting that I share one about him.

Like most stories revolving around Gramps, this one started with a typical problem while bird watching in one’s own backyard. It involved a bird feeder and the common neighborhood squirrels, much to my grandparents chagrin, greedily packed their cheeks full of bird seed.

I’ve heard of several ways to deter them from eating bird seed and destroying feeders. Most of them are fairly practical, and a few are conceptually hilarious yet very ineffective. PAM Cooking Spray anyone? That’s beside the point, as Gramps went to the root of the problem, and chose a simple solution. Relocation. Which went on for a few years.

Gramps’ Squirrel Relocation Service involved a baited box trap and a short, 1-2 mile joyride out to one of the many wooded areas around the town of Willshire. Nothing really out of the ordinary except for one minor detail that I’ve omitted thus far. It is one that sheds some light on my grandfather’s line of reasoning, and to this day causes me to chuckle. You see before their release and after a vigorously disorienting shake of the box trap courtesy of Gramps, each of the squirrels’ received a blue-painted tail.

When asked why he gave each of those squirrels the parting gift of a quick tail-dye-job. He matter-of-factly answered, “I wanna make sure I’m not catching the same one.”

Bluegrass logo – work-in-progress

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Since my day job primarily consists of  everything web, my free time is largely comprised of sketching, listening to and reviewing music, catching up on favorite tv shows, reading, and cooking. Today while sketching and listening to Steve Martin’s Rare Bird Alert, an idea struck. After roughly a few minutes of sketching I jumped into illustrator found a suitable font and added some graphical elements for the first part of the logo.

Here is what I have so far:

blue

first part of a logo concept for bluegrass related media – work-in-progress

The font choice was made mostly due to wanting a heavy condensed font in order to provide a “canvas” for the grass elements. I also wanted to go with a more modern sans-serif instead of the typical script, and slab-serif fonts that are usually used and associated with bluegrass music. Also another factor is that today’s musical landscape is very diverse and features some interesting, genre-bending artists, and I wanted to reinforce that idea.

A prime example of this genre-bending is Gangstagrass, who blends the traditional mountain music of Appalachian bluegrass with the vocal mixes and rhythms of rap and hip-hop. If you have ever watched the FX series Justified, you have heard their Emmy Nominated track, “Long Hard Times To Come,” which is the opening title theme of the series.

Font used: Agency FB Condensed Black
Time spent: roughly 30 minutes
Usage: I’ll be developing this further, but I’m thinking something like this could be used as a basis for a poster. (more to come later)