Adventures in Logo Land

While recently upgrading my websites I was struck by how many business identities I've had over the years. Hansel and Gretel left crumbs on the trail marking their journey; I've scattered logos along mine.

Peacock Sign Co. Logo 1 (1974)

While walking around Woodland Park Zoo one day in 1974, wondering what to name my newly launched sign painting business, I heard peacocks calling in the distance. Voila! A new business name was born, Peacock Sign Company. Painting paper banners for grocery stores helped pay for school and supported my book buying habit.

Peacock Sign Co. Logo 2 (1977)

In 1977 I married Vicki and supplemented our youth pastor's income by painting . Here's logo #2 for Peacock Sign Co.

Magazine Cartoons and Illustration (1979)

In 1979 I sold my first cartoon to a national magazine (Sat. Eve. Post). Vicki and I danced around the living room like we'd won the lottery. 

Vicki turned her immense art skills into a commercial venture, too (1980)

One of the funnest activities Vicki and I have done over the years was taking art classes. We took a calligraphy class together in 1980. She combined her excellent penmanship with her crow quill pen skill and soon she was up to her elbows in India ink. This was before our five kids came along.  

Family Challenge Ministries (1998)

From 1976 to 1998 I worked with teenagers in a number of churches. In 1998 we "retired" from parish ministry, took the plunge, and started a counseling practice called Family Challenge Ministries. I got the idea for this logo while on a family trip to the Science Museum in BC.

Cartoon Faces Caricatures (2000)

When not counseling couples and families I indulged my interest in drawing by teaching drawing at WWU and WCC and doing live caricatures at fairs, fests, and business events starting in 2000. This self portrait appeared on my Cartoon Faces business cards during that eight year frolic.

Youth Pastor Coach (2002)

A short lived business venture included a stint as Youth Pastor Coach, mentoring young adults working with teens. This logo was drawn by artist Fred Harper.

Positive Turn Life Tools (2004)

The entrepreneurial bug bit me again in 2004 and I launched a business called Positive Turn Life Tools, creating and manufacturing volvelles (aka adjustable round charts or data wheels) on which appeared tons of info on a circular chart. Luke Markowski designed this.

Erik Johnson, LLC (2008) 

Our counseling practice grew and we changed the name to Erik Johnson, LLC. Luke Markowski designed this logo, too. 

Mediation Services (2009)

In 2009 our practice expanded to include peace making in areas beyond couples and families.Erin Sullivan designed the Conflict Mediation Coach logo.

St. Whimsy Publications (2012)

For many years I've been free lance writing under the business name St. Whimsy Publications (I was one of the religious humor writers for Christianity Today). I finally got around to giving that business an icon.  

Here's my take on this trail of logos.

1.  I'm probably ADD.

2.  Running businesses feeds my love of adrenaline. 

3.  I've got 89 businesses to go before reaching the Fortune 100.

4.  I used to ride my bike in Bill Gate's Medina neighborhood. While he was programming computers I was doodling. If our roles had been reversed he'd be posting his legacy of logos on computer software that made me the mega-billionaire. But I wouldn't trade him places.

When Will I Learn Misery Doesn't Sell?

In 1971 I tried to sell the following dismal gag cartoons to Boy’s Life. Somehow the editor’s felt poisoned campers and cliff hanging kids weren’t in a nine-year-old subscriber’s best interest.

"You see? I told you earth worm stew would taste good."

"Yes, they're moose tracks, Jimmy. Pretty fresh, too."

"Tell me again how much fun we're having. I keep forgetting."

In 1977 I wrote and illustrated a children’s’ book entitled The Miserable Life of a Sockeye Salmon. What was I thinking? Here are the illustrations; I’ve spared you the maudlin text.

In 1982 I began drawing a 64 page graphic novel wherein the parish of a country priest gets kidnapped and held for ransom. Click here for the world’s first gander at Parish Snatchers. Our now 27 year old son was born at that time and I never took Pastor Amos beyond the first 7 pages. The world’s probably a better place because of it.

I mention these stories because it appears I just don’t learn. I’m currently working on a marriage-building board game for couples set in the Middle Ages: famine, plague, Inquisition, rebellions, leeching, torture, wars, no universal health care. I’m putting the feud in feudalism. A real crowd pleaser, huh?


Somehow I never inherited the “I like paintings of kids with big eyes” gene. Too bad. A velvet Elvis sells. For better or (probably) worse, I’m of the Bambi Meets Godzilla school of entertainment. Irony over tidy, adversity (sometimes) over victory, ambiguity, chaos, and puzzlement over cute.

This being the case, I now put on hold all plans for: 1) an expository essay reflecting on Jean Paul Sartre’s essay On The Viscous, wherein I deal once and for all with my aversion to things sticky, 2) a comic book version of Kierkegaard’s Sickness Unto Death, and 3) a novella wherein Orthodox Priests launch a church in rural Ferndale and marauding iconoclasts wearing Carhartt disrupt the liturgy.

I better stick to cute; it sells, misery does not. Now if only I can make the middle ages cute. Stay tuned.

Homage to the R. A. T.* Boys** of Bellingham***

Homage to the R. A. T.* Boys** of Bellingham***

C. S.  Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien had their Inklings, Joseph Priestly and Ben Franklin had their Club of Honest Whigs, Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley had their Algonquin Club, Dante Rossetti had his Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Picasso, Matisse, and Sartre had their Left Bank, Ken Kesey, Wavy Gravy and Stewart Brand had their Merry Pranksters, and Martin Luther had his Diet of Worms.

*R. A. T. = Readers and Thinkers group includes (from left to right): Marriage and Family Pastor in Cornwall Church of God, former CEO of mega food chain and current business consultant, baseball historian and senior pastor of Bellingham Covenant Church, flash fiction writer and head of the INN (college group at Western Washington University), baseball artist and senior pastor of Birchwood Presbyterian, counselor/mediator/erstwhile cartoonist, CEO of the NW's largest camping ministry (FIRS), and career coach and pastor of Christ the King.

** Not Pictured, Writer in Residence Second Baptist Church, Houston, TX

*** Best city in America

How Do You Say Moth?

Young Huck Finn calls his mother, “Hey Ma!”

Hear that “ah” sound in the word, “Ma?” Making an “ah” sound requires a wide-open mouth like when we say, “father,” “gaga,” or “Ali Baba.”

A sympathetic friend hears your tale of woe and says, “Aw!” This “awe” sound requires a circular mouth like when we say the words, “often,” “fawn,” or “shawl.”

There’s a subtle but important difference between these two sounds, “ah” and “awe.”

People on the east coast call the creature that flutters around porch lights, “mawth” (rhymes with “awe”) which is to me a richer, rounder, more manly way to identify this bug.

People on the west coast call these guys, “mahth” (rhymes with “ah”) which to me sounds smarmy, shallow, and insubstantial. It’s a wimpy way to identify a bug.

If you shouted at me, “Look out! Here comes a flying mahth,” I’d casually glance up with a disinterested air wondering what all the panic is all about.

But if you shouted, “Look out! Here comes a flying mawth,” I’d duck and cover and ask questions later.

If we’re going to talk about these critters, we have to get our dialects in sync. For practice, please repeat after me, “I often put a shawl around my fawn to protect it from moths.”

Do not say, “Ali Baba goes gaga when his father swats moths.”

So please, west coast folk, stop calling them “mahths” and start calling them “mawths.” It’s the right thing to do.

And think of the lives you’ll save.

These Games Don't Work

For years I've tried to create the next Rubik's Cube, Master Mind, and Scrabble game. I've failed but keep trying. Here are some old rejects.

Exhibit #1: Strained Glass. Arrange the colored circles into shapes that are both pleasing to the eye and useful for calculating simple math functions. Dismal failure.

Exhibit # 2: Scramble Face. Players splay the discs from the grommet and then carefully rearrange them to make a face. Since the discs are connected the level of difficulty is brain-numbingly easy. Grade? F-!

Exhibit #3: Spin Field! Games are supposed to entertain and challenge; this game bores to tears. Even with dice, movable score board, and running batters, it's a cross between Strat-O-Matic and a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.  

Exhibit #4: Holzendatz. A solitaire game wherein one turns the many discs in an attempt to align 7 datz of the same color in a row. The trick is--some datz must be aligned with holz strategically hidden throughout, thus leading the unwary player down fruitless dead ends. It's so complicated I failed to jot down the solution key, couldn't align the datz, and gave up.

Exhibit #5: Dice Line. Players scramble the rings then take turns rotating one ring at a time attempting to align five dice in a row, in order.  Part Stadium Checkers, part Yahtzee, part sleeping pill.

Exhibit #6: Dot Face. If you squint and tilt your head to the side you'll see behind the holes a caricature face. On the actual game one can rotate the acetate on which is printed the black background and see the face clearly through the holes. This game is for the easily amused.  Would make a nice coaster, actually.

There are many more to display but a wave of sleepiness is coming over me. Hey, maybe I should market these as sleep inducing devices!

Thistles Before Breakfast

This prickly bugger was growing outside our front door.

A Bug's Life

I inherited from my dad a powerful reading lens. I used it today to draw small stuff; I attacked the world of bugs with my markers.  Just think what one could do with a powerful microscope. I could draw bee's knees.

Ode d' Sandal

If a pleasant experience is like a perfectly fitting shoe,

 what is a perfectly fitting shoe like?

This is my tenth and last summer

wearing a perfectly fitting pair of sandals.

They are falling apart.

One could say they are under their last legs.

Any sure footedness I've experienced

this decade of summer walking

is due in large part to these

hard working and uncomplaining sandals.

Goodbye friends. You will be missed.

Free Book

I've always wanted to write a book wherein I quote Sartre, Solomon, and Simon Cowell. Well, here it is: Stealth Drawings: The Existential Quandary of Being Stared At.  29 pages of miscellaneous quotes from philosophers, psychologists, and theologians illustrated with over 100 clips from 30 years of sketching. Follow this link and type "stealth" in the search menu. During check out make up your own password. Let me know if you hit glitches.