When the project that consumed my life during last week is printed and delivered, I will share the experience with all of you. For the time being, I can only say that my schedule was out of my hands (and firmly in my client’s).

I was not thrilled with a few of the new images Bennett had selected. The reasoning behind all the previous selections was to give a face for the viewer to identify with. This is what made Caramba! Girl the ideal image for the 1st hierarchy position (orange photo). Then, when we found that many of our images were, in fact, a part of a separate exhibition, we had to make some changes. In Round Six, we lost some great images for a few, less emotionally identifiable, images. I only had to remove one: the sea horse, my favorite. The line-screen we now have in place for printing purposes blew out the image completely and rendered it unusable.

Looking for faces I found few in the Design Archives. Few, save for the MTV Movie Awards work designed by MTV Networks, New York. The big head posters. There were four; Chris Rock, Britney Spears, Ozzy, and Snoop Doggy Dog. Narrowing the choice to Britney and Snoop, I did some test market research.

Do Nebraska designers respond better to an image of Britney Spears or Snoop Dog? Market research concludes that 9 out of 10 prefer Snoop, and the remainder chose Prince over Britney, who wasn’t even included in the survey.

Then disaster stuck. The same calamity that befell the sea horse image, befell Snoop’s Giant Head. The line screen did a reverse blow-out and his “face” was unrecognizable. I spent several rounds in Photoshop before attempting the Britney head. That one worked. Reluctantly, I choose readability over market-research. A Giant Snoop Head that is unrecognizable as a Giant Snoop Head is scarcely a Giant Snoop Head at all. When I sent the files to Bennett on Friday, I included the ill-fated Snoop Head image as well, in case he would choose to replace it.