Logo and Identity Design blog by Jason Black Logo and Identity Design blog by Jason Black

When I was little, I would always look forward to the holidays and going over to my grandmother’s house. Not just for the obvious reasons, but because she used to make her own pickles (and I LOVE pickles!), pickled tomatoes and pickled watermelon! That’s right, pickled watermelon! Now I know that it is fairly common to pickle watermelon rind, but this is the “meat” along with the rind. Sounds gross I know, but if you like pickles, especially half sour pickles, it is just GREAT!

Before my grandmother died around ten years ago, she made sure she gave all of her recipes to my mother, aunt and wife. The problem was, she didn’t have ALL of her recipes written down and pickled watermelon was one of those recipes.

In my house, my wife and I share cooking duties because, if I may say so myself, we are both pretty darn good cooks. I handle most of the daily cooking and ALL grilling while she takes care of baking, soups and stews (which I am REALLY bad at all of them, LOL). I am GREAT with throwing things together and having them taste good. I also make my own marinades and salad dressings so how hard can pickled watermelon be, right?!?

I’ve been searching the internet for pickled watermelon recipes for years now and recently came across two. With a little help from my mom, we were able to piece together what we THINK my grandmother did to make her pickle brine, especially the brine for the pickled watermelon. Well… I tried it yesterday!

It has to ferment for just about a week but if it turns out tasting right, I’ll post how I made it so that others can try it. If not, it is back to the drawing board and won’t give up until I get it right!

I’ll let you know how it goes.

P.S. – I wanted to thank an old high school friend Tara Frey for giving me a shout out in her blog. If you are into crafts, (interior) design, photography or just a good read, please check out her blog. Also, she has a book coming out soon so I’ll give a plug for that too!

I just noticed that I haven’t updated my logo design portfolio for a LOOOONG time!

I had a client ask me, about a year ago to add his logo to my portfolio and I told him that I absolutely would. I remember updating the page locally but I just looked at it and, nothing. I guess I never updated it (or saved it before uploading). So now I need to update it again, but this time for real!

I have a bunch of new logos that need to be displayed in my portfolio. It’s been pretty stagnant for a while but I’m going to try and update it more often in the future.

My blog too… Going to try and post at least once a week from now on!

Oh… You don’t need to register to leave a comment in my blog anymore. I still have to approve the comment (to avoid spam) but a lot of people emailed me with blog comments instead of registering so I decided to remove that. So bring on the comments!!

Well, after 10+ years, I’ve finally given in and submitted a few designs to a logo design book. For some reason, I’ve never submitted anything. Maybe I’ve been scared that I wasn’t “good enough”, I don’t know. But I guess I’ll find out now. I’ve always wanted to be published but I guess I just always waited around to have the authors banging on my door.

I sent an email to one author a couple years ago just to thank him for his books and he returned my email ASKING me to submit some designs for his upcoming book. For some reason I never sent them to him.

Ok, I had an author banging on my door and still didn’t do anything about it. Hmmm. No excuses now. I’ve submitted 4 entries to the upcoming book “Mini Book of Great Logos”. Now it is out in the open for all to see. I’m REALLY hoping I make it now, LOL.

I’ve been spending A LOT of time on Facebook lately. I’ve reconnected with family and friends that I haven’t seen in close to 20 years. I’m really loving it! I also started spending a little time with Twitter.  For some reason I just can’t get into Twitter. To me, it is lacking something. Like eating a sandwich made from 2 slices of bread an nothing in between.

For those people out there that have never spent time with me, I have been a smoker since I was 16 (though I did quit once for a year in 2006). That is until March 1st, 2009!!! I made up my mind in February that I had enough, set the date for March 1st and had my last cigarette on February 28th before I went to bed. Ok, I cheated on the 1st and had about 6 drags (puffs, whatever, LOL) throughout the day but that was it.

So that’s pretty much everything I’ve been up to lately. Hopefully I can find some time to start updating this a little more often.