Current location:	Anaheim CA
Current mood:	chipper
Current music:	The Lounge-O-Leers - "Survivor/Girl From Ipanema"
Entry tags:	ribbons

...She knows what she knows. I know what she's thinking. Sugar kisses, sugar kisses...
Part five of the ribbon backstory. Our story continues in 2005.



A week before the year started, Michael Mason died. Christian suggested a memorial ribbon, so I had a small number of ribbons printed in the standard typeface that said "9,000 Iced Teas, No Lemon" to be handed out at Gallifrey. I learned that the official spelling was Ice, not Iced, so I ordered the fancy ones you see here for ConDor. I still have a few left, they'll make their final appearance at either conzilla or laconiv, and that's it.

Michael had ordered several hundred stock-typeface ribbons that said "New York in '95", which he wanted to give away as a memorial to the memory of Robt. Sacks; they're somewhere in his effects, I expect them to turn up eventually...

So Michael didn't make it to inter_action, or Interthingy 2 as it was also known. I had made inquiries of the mysterious "You Bastards" in charge of the Interthingy spoof website, to see if they already had plans for "Clan Interthyngy" ribbons at the Glasgow Worldcon. Well, it turned out that there were convention-printed "Clan Interthingye" ribbons, in addition to my blue-on-blue ribbons that circulated there. It can be difficult to avoid duplication when you're trying to keep your silly ribbon a surprise until the day. (These ribbons are all gone -- I believe I gave the last one to Vince Docherty when I saw him at a subsequent convention.)

Typefaces: Clarendon Bold, and American Text. American Text is an Old English typeface with clean modern lines to it simultaneously with its old-fashioned feel; as I've mentioned before, I like it.


Hall Costume Award Nominee has a slightly interesting history behind it: it started out as a silly ribbon, I had some printed up in stock roman before I had these fancies made up. I would hand them out to people with good hall costumes at conventions where they weren't giving out their own Hall Costume Awards. It was my way of saying "I don't have the authority to give you a Hall Costume Award, but I think you ought to be nominated for one."

And then I ran my own convention. At animelosangeles 1, I turned the "Nominee" ribbons over to our Hall Costume Award judges, along with some plain-roman "Hall Costume Award" ribbons; the fancy ribbons you see where whomped out in time for Animé Los Angeles 2, where we also had fancy rosettes.

The two levels of ribbons, or three once we got the rosettes, allowed the roving judges to do something comparable to "first place, second place, third place" and give the higher-class ribbon/rosettes to the stand-out efforts.At this time, both of these styles are kept in the "Animé Los Angeles Ribbons" bins.

Typefaces: It's all Clarendon Condensed and Clarendon Extended.


I had some ordinary red and gold ribbons printed up with Space Cadet, Space Cadette, and Space Cadet Recruiter on them. I'd made up ordinary "Space Cadet" ribbons in 2002, if I remember correctly; at Westercon, either colleency or lyzard13 (or both of them) said I simply had to get the feminine form, "Cadette" for the next time out. So we had both those styles, plus "Recruiter" by the time we got to the Worldcon in ... 2003, I think? I might have rushed them in time for Con José, I'm not sure, but I know we had them at Torcon 3.

They turned out to be a big hit at our bid and sales tables for laconiv, so I tried my hand at incorporating a graphic into a ribbon. (The pencil on the LiveJournal ribbons doesn't count, because that was just a character in a dingbat font.) It took two tries, which is why you see two slightly different rockets here. I didn't know how fine a line I could get away with and have it look good. When I got the prototype back, you could just barely see the red ribbon show through where the lines are. It looked like the foil had been scratched there; it wasn't really a good strong line. Back into Paint Shop Pro to try again. The results looked pretty good, and they've been reprinted in red and copper. We'll probably use up the last of them at conzilla.

Typeface: Clarendon Condensed. The graphic was adapted from the art on file from the big roll-up banner.