Tee Party Poster

Every year our kids’ Montessori school hosts a big golf fund-raiser. Naturally, I volunteered to do the poster.

Thanks to school administrator Lorraine Scarafile, I got a nice landscape photo of the Bristol Harbour golf course from Rick Stewart, a photographer local to that area. Hmmm... I mused. Nice brochure photo, but as a poster all by itself, both a little low-rez and a little low “zing."

What to do?

I pondered, then remembered Claes Oldenberg, the Swedish sculptor famous for -- Guess what? -- huge renditions of little things. Like a 45-foot steel clothespin that stands near Philadelphia's City Hall.

Okie-doke!

Lorraine gladly supplied me with a handful of their custom-printed golf tees. The toys I borrowed from my kids. I then used a digital camera to shoot each “giant-to-be” element in close-up on a sheet of white seamless paper in my driveway, giving care to match camera and sun angles to the landscape photo. After bringing them all together in Photoshop (faking that logo on my daughter's teapot was fun) -- voila! Giant rubber ducky, giant sand shovel, and a giant "Huzzah!"

I finished up the whole thing using Adobe Illustrator for poster text and page layout.

You like? Personally, I think Claes would approve.

Tee Party Carts

Sometimes things don't work out like you expect. Like with the additional posters and ballot I made to support another aspect of the same Montessori golf fund-raiser.

School admin Lorraine's idea was to tie placards to the front of all the golf carts, and sell bragging rights. Okay. I love turning visions into reality, so off I went.

With permission, pro photographer Dawn Mamikunian provided tons of great kid pix to choose from. I used Adobe Photoshop for a consistent look, making 36 big posters, like the one you see at left. Adobe InDesign marshaled everything into a "Have a ball!" themed bulk-mail ballot (see front and back at right; click to enlarge) to encourage potential patrons to bid up the price of the posters in a silent auction.

Everything was ready to go. I even made a website preview gallery for folks to browse the ballot and scrutinize all of the individual posters at their leisure.

So what went "wrong?"

Well, a certain corporate sponsor caught wind of all this, took one look, and decided they liked everything so much they ponied up an irresistable lump-sum donation. They bought out everything!

Sometimes I wonder... Is there maybe such a thing as being a little too successful?

LPGA Ad

The annual Wegmans-sponsored LPGA golf tournament at Locust Hill is a really big event around here, drawing huge crowds and international news coverage.

Wegmans kindly gifted the Montessori school with some ad space in their thick and nicely printed event Program, right. At left is the ad I made to fit the given space on page 84, once again based on an excellent photo by professional Dawn Mamikunian.