Current location:	Santa Ana CA
Current mood:	chipper
Current music:	Bruce Wooley & The Camera Club - "Video Killed the Radio Star"
Entry tags:	conventions, ribbons

... my door into the day in my blue world. I turn to stone when you are gone, I turn to stone...

Ribbon story part 30. Ribbons ordered, or at least art prepared, in time for laconiv.

• Filk Wrangler
• Dawn Patrol
• I filk, therefore I R
• I filk, therefore I R flat
• I can sing that song with three notes!
• (Psi) (phi) (dandelion)

Filk Wrangler

Dawn Patrol

The head of L.A.con IV's Filk programming, Rick Weiss, asked for two official ribbons to be printed. Filk Wrangler and Dawn Patrol were both printed using the rocket/starburst plate and the regular plain lower-case roman typeface. I believe "Filk Wrangler" was for the staff, and "Dawn Patrol" has its usual meaning of the diehard filkers who stay up all night and then go to breakfast together as soon as the coffee shop opens in the morning.

In addition to the ribbons for official purposes, Rick asked for these unofficial ribbons He wanted them to match the official convention ribbons, but with "R" in a sens-serif typeface and "flat" in italics. I laid out I Filk, therefore I R and I Filk, therefore I R flat as two separate plates. I deliberately made it look like they were made from the same plate with the addition of flat for the second one. I couldn't match their typeface because I have no idea what it is, so I just used my usual Clarendon and Clarendon Condensed.

One reason for using two plates for the two messages has to do with planning ahead. If we'd had them print the "flat" ribbons first, and then trimmed the word off of the plate and printed the others, we wouldn't have the option of using these plates later. As it stands now, if Rick wants to, we can print more of both message without the rocket/starburst by asking them to trim off the logo, and there won't be a setup charge.

figmo wanted to have I can sing that song with three notes! printed up, mostly to get a laugh out of Lee Gold. She asked for a dandelion next to the message. I was originally doubtful as to how well the canonical dandelion (from Dandelion Conspiracy) would reproduce, so I asked the incomparable fairegoddess to draw a dandelion based on the Dandelion Report logo. Lynn wasn't happy with the cartoon version, so I scaled down the standard dandelion and printed them up the way she wanted them.

The cartoon dandelion didn't go to waste, though. Later that year, Kay Shapero wanted ribbons with the symbols Psi, phi, dandelion (standing for psience phiction filk music) to hand out at Loscon. I pulled Lindsay's art from my files and laid out the art for Kay's ribbons.