I have to admit, I’m disappointed.
A few issues back, I offered up a chance for the readers of Big RED & Shiny to design an issue of our little pink website. This came out of many requests by my friends and my students to let them have a crack at it, wishing to see their own look applied to one of our issues. While this idea scared me a little, it seemed like fun and thus was born the first and only Big RED design competition.
Time passed. Occasionally, Christian Holland would write to ask how it was going, and then encourage his friends to submit. I cajoled my students at every opportunity (and these are students studying Graphic Design at RISD, mind you, who should want nothing more than a chance to show off their design skillz!), prodded my friends, crossed my fingers and...
Eventually, past the deadline, I received one submission. Just one.
Stefano Pasquini’s lo-fi design adorns this issue, and I’m proud to run it. Stefano is an artist whose work I know from a few shows together, and I was happy to see his name in my inbox. His bio is in our News section if you want to know more about his work.
Still, I’m troubled. Stefano lives in Bologna, Italy. The Atlantic Ocean, as well as the Mediterranean and Ligurian Seas separate him from Boston. I am happy to import design from Italy, yet feel somehow embarrassed that it was my only option, since the designers here could not be bothered.
Perhaps I ask too much. Maybe it isn’t right to expect you to do my job, and I should just accept that you want to read and are willing to let us do the writing and design. That’s fair. Yet, where are those who were asking me to let them design an issue?
-
- Never stops thinking about Big RED & Shiny.
