Saturday, August 4, 2007

Stew Mac Diaries 12


My label design is complete! This is the first of hopefully many "Maun" ukuleles.

I wanted to use the following elements in the label to reflect different elements of my life:

1) The moon- "Moon viewing" is a popular late summer/autumn event in Japan.

- We live in a place that is named for its view of the moon ("Field where the moon is viewed" in Japanese)

- My son is entralled with the moon, but he pronounces it "maun" (he is 1 year 9 mos old)

- I'm pretty much building this at night, so the moon seemed apropos.

2) Mountains

- I enjoy the mountains. I like hiking, camping, looking at the scenery, you name it.

- The mountain in the label represents Mt. Fuji, which both the symbol of Japan as well as a play on my Japanese nickname "Fujiyama Takashi" (guy who's as tall as Mt. Fuji).

3) I wanted to convey the feeling of a summer-evening.

- Purple sky
- Green lettering (bamboo-ish)

- I thought about adding some fireworks, but that seemed too cheesy.

I poked around on the internet and found that there is a frontier town in Botswana named "Maun" that is a famous launching point for safaris. Perhaps I'll write a letter to the mayor and send him a ukulele out of good will. Heck, how about I become the ukulele ambassador to Africa? That would be fun.

Looking at the big image above, I just noticed that the letters are a bit off center. I'll ahve to go back and fix that.

See you next time,

Kanagawa G

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