The Analogy of Leverage

Last night the Fulcrum Group met together and had a very productive session. At the beginning of the meeting, and after learning that Archimedes discovered the lever, I heard a quote by Archimedes which began a very thought-provoking discussion. The quote was,

“Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.”

The question was then asked of the group at large,

“If this group is, in fact, a fulcrum - which represents motivation, accountability and resource - then what does the lever represent, and what does the object being lifted represent?”

After listening to the opinions of the others, I gave them mine. I told them I thought that the object being lifted represented each individual project that we’ve assigned to ourselves and that the lever represented the talents and/or abilities that we have. Our talents and abilities, alone, may reach and be applied to our projects, but without the motivation, accountability and additional resources of the fulcrum, we are left armed only with our own strength. The Fulcrum Group has provided me with the ability to multiply my own strength and give me the leverage over my own projects that I lack without it.

Stirring the Back-Burners

Well, along with my "front-burner" projects (namely, the illustrating of a children's book with an friend from the Fulcrum Group, writing, editing and illustrating my own Training Wheels series), I'm also trying to keep some of my other already-existing ventures fresh. Among other things, I'm currently designing a logo for a convenience store company in Florida which is always fun for me. Not only do I really enjoy designing logos themselves, but every once in a while, I find it refreshing and even creatively necessary to jump from one project to another. It allows me some much needed change of scenery and the switching of concepts.

Most recently, my LittleLDS brand has been getting some subconscious mental attention. I've discovered that while I work on one project, inspiration and motivation will often build and eventually crescendo into an outright epiphany at some point in favor of the projects that I've had simmering on my mental "back-burners" for a while. I think this is the responsible side of my brain's way of keeping things exciting and fresh for the childishly impatient attention-span’s side.

Anyway, while working on something completely unrelated the other day, I had an idea that would be a lot of fun to do with LittleLDS. Until now, the products that I sell with LittleLDS have been designed specifically for LDS (Latter-Day Saint) children. Of course, logically, the marketing of these products has been geared only towards young LDS parents (mostly mothers) because those children can’t buy for themselves. The other day, however, it finally hit me that I’ve been completely ignoring the parents themselves as direct consumers all along! Here I am, trying to get parents to buy stuff for their kids when I could have been simultaneously marketing different products to the parents themselves! Immediately after making this realization this weekend I went to work to expand the brand to include the new simple, consistent, and logical next step… BigLDS!

LittleLDS is all about using coloring pages to help LDS kids understand their faith better. So, what is BigLDS? Simply put, it’s the vehicle I’ll be using to package all my other LDS-related ideas into. All the ideas I’ve had that just don’t quite fit well into the LittleLDS brand. Things like the Latter-Day Side comic that I created months ago, which hasn’t had a logically place to be displayed. It’s also where I’m featuring the WMC stuff. The WMC was a gag-concept that, oddly enough, is morphing into a real thing right before my eyes (more on that later). Anyway, check it out. Go to the BigLDS store link (in the right column of this blog) to see what I’m building there. I’m still tweaking everything, so explore with the same restrained scrutiny that you would if you were walking around the construction site of a funhouse. Enjoy.

The Fulcrum Group (Part II)

This is the logo I designed for The Fulcrum Group. I'm a big fan of simplicity in my logo designing, and I think the light "F" and the dark "G" in this one are a good contrast to one another. The trick was coming up with a good balance of weight between the positive and negative spaces. My thanks to the Amazing Glennardo for helping me narrow down some of my concept's weaknesses and suggesting this version's +/- effect.