Some Legacy!

For reasons I'm not gonna go into here, my career as a graphic designer is over. 

As I look back over my thirty five years in the advertising business, I've come to the unpleasant realization that I have absolutely nothing to show for it. Nothing I can point to and say, "I did that!" Nothing to prove I was ever even here!

I guess I shouldn't be too surprised. By its very nature, advertising is temporary and ephemeral. Newspaper ads last a day, flyers a week and billboards a month. Such work was never meant to be permanent.

It became even worse when I made the switch to online advertising. Technically it doesn't exist at all, as it's just a series of ones and zeroes in the ether! Other than a few printouts I kept, there's no record I ever did any such projects at all!

Pretty depressing to think that all that hard work is gone forever.

Or is it?

Back in the mid 1990s I was working for Williams/Randall Marketing in Terre Haute, Indiana. That was the home of the "colorful boss" I posted about years ago.

Sometime around 1996 he assigned me to design a logo for Win Energy, some sort of power company or co-op in Southern Indiana.

Win Energy is located just south of Vincennes, Indiana, along Highway 41. Recently I was driving along the highway and spotted my logo! Amazingly, it's STILL there nearly THIRTY YEARS after I designed it!

That's an absolute eternity in the world of advertising and marketing. In fact it may be the only thing I've ever designed that actually still exists!

Unfortunately, the one example of my work that still survives isn't without its problems. For one thing, the text inside the red ring is wildly off-center! No idea how that happened, or why 1996 Bob let that happen. Surely I knew how to properly center elements back then? 

I'm kind of wondering if something happened to it in the past thirty years? Like maybe someone at Win Energy accidentally messed with it? We'll never know.

That text isn't an italic font either-- it's a normal one that's been slanted with the skew tool. It'd take too long to explain why here, but that's a big no-no in the world of design. I also distorted the left leg of the "W" to line up with the bottom of "Energy" as well. No idea why I did that back then, as it's something I'd never do now. 

Despite the logo's many shortcomings, it's probably the only piece of work I've ever done that still exists. 

Wow, what a legacy!