DJG Design

“Rumors of your absence from STEP magazine’s Design 100 competition MUST be exaggerated! I’ve been impressed with your work in past Design 100s, but it doesn’t look like you’ve entered the 2009 competition…at least so far.”

-Tom Biederbeck, Editor / STEP Inside Design Magazine / Oct. 2008

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STEP. I think you’re living up to your name…well, maybe with an adopted “E” in the middle to get it right, as I’m watching every year for rising prices on your competition fees. How many rungs will I climb? I’m not even sure if I entered last year as the years are running together now for me, but I’m leaning towards “nope.” I’m for certain it was due to billfold blues, but another reason is because I lost interest in what I was doing so why blow money on it and share it? I’m a little more upbeat this year as I’m turning the corner on 30 and another round of “more-more-more-more”. Still, I almost didn’t enter this year until the last check of my online bank account. Next year, who knows? I’m just curiously concerned as to what is going on in dollar signs? My aim of intent is not for this choppy letter to sound wrong or biting or ouchy or itchy or immaturie or nasty…worshiping of St. Upid*, a big yes…frustrated and humiliated on my end, perhaps a tad bit? Whatever, I’m a happy camper and thanks for making it this far.

High competition prices are weeding out the little guys who scrape by. Personally, I know that I’ve barely cleared 80 dollars all year from clients, which is the price for me to only submit 2 entries. So, I think I qualify for “little guy”. The 2 entries I’m forking over are pretty much bending over my billfold and breaking it in two. In previous years I’ve been fortunate to dump 80 mades-a-milking, unlimited on your doorSTEP for a reasonable sum of money, a sum I’m now seeing with double vision. I’m a bit perplexed at this current flex. In a time where I feel the idea of the “Mom & Pop” design house is a mockery of every high-price Tom, Dick and Church Secretary who bang desktop decorations out because they have access to a computer (which, sometimes I find their work more charming and immediately served)…it’s the design magazines of all people who should be rewarding (in lower entrance pocket book exams) those who work on top of work, get up early and stay up late making basement donuts (notice here we don’t spell it with “dough”).

Even though I still have a goal to do what it is I do for full-time income some day, it’s never really been about the money and I knew that at the starting line of my design odyssey. Though, I think rising competition prices finally just made it be a money case. I think that in the past seven years I’ve spent more on competition fees than what I’ve actually saved. I know I don’t spend much on tape, cutting blades, spray paint, glue sticks and construction paper. It might not be a wise business venture, I get that, but it’s the glossy recognition that helps get the work out and sometimes gets work that pays more than one cheeseburger. Recognition helps a young struggling kid tickled on both ends of the scroll and I’m thrilled to think that some of the magazines and whatnots might even eventually become shredded to either evolve into other books or poster papers or the lining of a puppy carrier somewhere this side of Deer Creek Falls, Cornwall. Making things for me isn’t about winning prized ponies, beer helmets and cotton candy, even though those things are nice added bonuses to parade with. Awards certainly don’t get me to point C, but they might get me to B or B-thirty, which in-turn might mate with C to get me out of my day job, in some sort of mutated moody Monday morning, if I’m caught in the right spirit. Which, in-turn might finally get me the urge to shout, “Look Ma and Pa I’m no longer a college drop-out failure.”

I’d like to say I stay in my basement full-time, but that’s not the case as I’ve previously put it. I realize that everything is rising in cost, the economy stool is flowing over and we’re all doomed. I realize that it takes a large amount of good money to make, distribute and payroll a major magazine, especially orchestrating special awesome issues like the STEP 100. But, I can’t help but feel it’s just getting ridiculous. Not to mention, I think you’d get a more well-rounded selection of work, from people you wouldn’t expect if entry prices were lower. I’m 0 for 4 with Algebra classes, but I tend to think more money could be made in the long run if competition entry fees were cheaper. Ya know? This is similar (for me at least?) to raising the price of vending machine items. I’m not saying your design magazine is as cheap, non-nutritional and throw-away as junk food, though it’s fueled many great and passionate design adventures in my world and I’m a big fan. I’m saying that it’s like hiking up all the items in a vending machine to where you can only get one over-priced thing for a dollar, when everything could easily be made 50 cents or cheaper. In such a world I know that everybody would spend their whole dollar, maybe even a Lincoln to feed the family. Money would be made and one more child could be fed. I’ve never understood this.

On another end…I was the small town grade-schooler who couldn’t wait to “git” and get tucked into that slip of 40 minute-onct-a-week art class to finally execute the creative rights that were squandered to the back lot of my brain while managing to make it through the school day blues (and I’m still there now in the day job tune). Though it was definitely in my own private Missouri, of bedwoom and backwoods, where the real goods were got at…it was in this makeshift “art” room where I learned to work together with my fellow makers. It was here I hunched happy and content, saliva dripping, with a meager box of 24 colors, as the uninspired jerk wads with the biggy-size box of a hundred (plus a pathetic built-in sharpener) spent the entire period breaking in-half a wide assortment of made-up B-Side rainbow colors to toss at me in order to beat my day. But, it was brighten, what they did. You know why? Because at the end of each class with each week, I raked up all the extra orphaned bits and pieces, saw their potential and fed them to my newsprint paper, which in-turn has lead to some ideas that eventually wound up on your well-printed pages.

Now, what exactly am I trying to say? Not sure, and that ‘n’ this is something I have to put up with every second of back ‘n’ forth with the upstairs. I’m not trying to win hearts or exercise my patriotic spew. I’m not saying I wouldn’t be opposed to some sort of bonus points program, rewards system, price cutting card or a salary cap thing with competition fees. What I am saying is what all I just said and to add that through it all as we quickly unravel this ball, I’m not giving up on you and your fantastic design coverage. I love STEP. I can’t afford a subscription and barely look at it, but I love it. I barely look at any design magazines, but I love them, mostly just love “it”, design. Even when I think I don’t, I still do and it still comes back to poke and prod me in the night. Back to you, I love every piece of person at your offices and beyond who have helped me and my little makes in some way. I even salute those who may curse my name in the after-hours as they sift through and catalog my design dumps and read/see my silly testimonials, interviews and now…this electronic sampling. Please tell me you have lent all the poster piles of competitions’ past to those who truly need warmth to burn or sleep beneath? Add this letter to the pile under the overpass or please tack it with the other junk above your own bunk? I originally had intentions to drop this into my entry package that I AM sending, but then I had second-thoughts about writing a letter as my writing is quite foolish and the whole idea is quite selfish and sloppy. Then again, I thought I could just typewriter it, bang it out in the morning dew, and mail it out with the postal blue. But, then I thought that idea was still ignorant and arrogant. So, finally I just put my gut in the cage with my heart and let them duke this out.

I appreciate everything that you’ve done for me in the past whether it’s your kindness on the phone or email or with appreciating my piles of work and saving several pages of glossy wow-wow space for me. That’s great stocking stuffer for this kid and I am sure tickled to know it’s trickled into other people/peep holes, places and things. That means so much to me that you helped play second stork. I appreciate the present day email check-ups and multiple mailings to my door, wondering what the heck I’m doing. This means a ton to me that you care enough to give me a free check-up. I hope we can further extend this appreciation on both ends as the paper trail extends and meanders. I realize my little silly stink might cause me to gamble with “the system” a bit and if I’ve wronged you, then I’m sorry. But, please laugh as it is way better to do so. Heck, this letter might even cause me to lose my ‘08-80-Bucks and have my work be swept into a janitor’s broom closet (which is a location I’ve made many a poster and a working location I prefer than my present stab at data entry / STEP letter writing). Maybe just put your trust in your fellow makers, and they will come, clinching Lincoln’s nonetheless. Logs, letters, rainbow stumps or dollar markers, you make that STEP.

-djg

* “St. Upid” is the intellectual property of writer and pop-culture analyst, Chad T. Johnston. It was borrowed for this essay.