Jason Black Logo and Graphic Design in Coral Springs Florida

I was fortunate enough to spend this past weekend watching the taping of American Ninja Warrior in Miami. It was the most fun I’ve had of the three I’ve been to (and no, no spoilers so don’t ask 😉 ). If you’ve never seen the show, I suggest watching it!

Onto the logo stuff…

Along the lines of American Ninja Warrior, it was really nice getting to see the logos I designed for Drew Drechsel and David “Flip” Rodriguez being worn by fans.

Drew Drechel’s logo

David “Flip” Rodriguez’s logo

I even wore my “Real Life Ninja” Drew Drechsel shirt (my wife and son as well) to support a my friend!

I CANNOT WAIT until we get to do it all again next year!!

For a while now, I write a new blog on my iPhone in the notes then email the note in hopes that I remember to log in and post that new blog.
Well, I have like four blogs that I never did because I don’t remember to do it! Until now…
I found the wordpress app (that has been out for a while) so I can now update my blog right from my iPhone!! How cool is that?!?
Right now I am at a birthday party with my son. Since the last thing on his mind is old dad while he is hanging out with his 9 year old friends, I get to sit here and try out the new app.
So here it is… Spelling, grammer mistakes and all!!

I’ve been proud of my website design since I designed it (and Lori implemented it) around three years ago. The problem is, it just isn’t me anymore. I’m not this dark. I think I need something fun or at least alive!

Ok, so now that I have decided to redesign my website, I now have to design myself a website. I’m a designer, that’s easy right??? I HATE DESIGNING FOR MYSELF!! My logo took about 4 years. I wouldn’t have a business card but I had a meeting a few years ago and needed one so I threw one together within 5 minutes (that was the deadline for my printer to have it done in time) and left out my email address. I have yet to replace it!

The one idea that I have is to use a photo that my wife took to base my design from. She is an amateur photographer and she has some pretty good work. Then, since her name starts with a “J” also, I can give her a part of my site to display some of her work.

Hmmm.

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.

I’ve been playing poker with my friends for about 2 years on Friday nights. It’s been a great, fun way to to have everyone get together a couple times a month.

Since starting to play at home, I’ve really gotten into collecting poker chips, both singles and sets. I think it’s the design that got to me. It’s also the design that made me design my own custom poker chip set for my home games. They are ceramic chips instead of the traditional clay chips which a lot of casinos are moving toward  instead of clay chips, I guess because of price. If they are good enough for casinos, who am I to argue, LOL? As a bonus, I was able to design on the entire chip, including the edges, instead of only the the inlay (face).

It was really a fun experience to put design on something that is only 1.5″ around.

Since designing them, I haven’t had the chance to use them but I am really looking forward to it.

I’ve been speding a lot of time on facebook lately. I’m finding a lot of old friends as well as a lot of people from school that I never really spoke to, but find myself really enjoying hearing what they have to say now. It really is strange though… I moved away from Richboro, PA when I was 19 so I still see everyone as they were almost 20 years ago. As strange as it is, I’m having a TON of fun!!

I just wish I could find a couple of other good friends that I lost contact with, one being Tracy Schrecengost Cotton. Who knows, maybe she’ll find this post and email me. 🙂

I’ve been playing poker at my house every Friday night for about 2 years now. For some reason, soon after starting I got on this kick of wanting real poker chips. No, not the chips you find in all the stores that say, “Real Casino Poker Chips” on the box, but REAL casino poker chips.

A few months into playing, I got my first set of REAL chips, Nevada Jack’s Skulls ceramic chips. Now these are GREAT chips but I still wanted REAL CLAY chips. I found that I wasn’t the only one eather. There are forums with tons of people that collect chips like crazy. Well, after reading posts there, I wanted more.

Anyway, what I’m getting at is, two weeks ago I fell into an amazing find. Aquasino tounament chips. They are from a casino boat on South Beach, Miami, FL and for some reason these chips were never used. They are REAL casino grade clay chips made by Blue Chip Company. I’m guessing that there were about 9000 of them made and I bought about 4500 of them. That’s right, 4500 poker chips!!! No, not for myself. I turned around and sold them off, though I did keep a set for myself. After buying them, I realized that some of the chips were warped (not a good thing) but they were still casino grade chips from a casino. Anyway, I ended up selling them to a really nice guy for my cost and he was able to bake them (yes, bake them) and flatten them. So now he has perfect chips to use for his charity poker games he holds twice a year.

Why am I wrtting all of this? Well, not much more to say.

I did adopt a dog a couple weeks ago but that is a post by itself. Maybe next week.

For so long I’ve always been scared to lose my files. When I first started out, I would burn a new CD with all of my files every month and backup to a jump drive every day. Then I moved to an external hard drive once a week and a jump drive every day. That was such a pain but I did it to make sure I always had my clients files in case they ever needed them.

Then one day I thought, what if my house catches fire. Ok, at that point the least of my worries will be my files (though if I can grab my hard drive AFTER my family, I will) in a time like that. But, it is very important to me that I always have those files.

I started looking for an online back up service so that I knew my files were safe. I was fully prepared to pay whatever it cost but it ended up that it was free. I found a site called Mozy which has a free service and a pay service. Since my files aren’t that big (under a gig for the thousands of files I have) and the only difference is storage size, I went with the free service. After that I recommended a few people that signed up and ended up with 3gb now. Not bad!

Anyway, give it a try if you are looking for an online back up service. Oh, if you want me to get some more free space, use the referral code K53DVD.