Preparing a Clean Plate

There is no reason why lunch can’t be beautiful. First and foremost I love making lunch on the weekends. I can take my time and come up with something new, something exciting. Sometimes it’s a crazy chicken sandwich with slices of apples and other times its a salmon sandwich with shaved carrots and raisins (see more here). As I was making a new ham wrap this past weekend, I couldn’t help but notice the parallels between the process of making a wrap to the process of making a design.

The Beginning: This is the experimenting stage, where you are just throwing around a couple ideas looking for the right combo. The foundation or the start of something great. This is what a note book might look like, or the blank page of a document, with loosely placing objects.

The Substance: Maybe its the text that you have flowed in; the picture that you are done retouching or the main illustration that you completed – the main substance – dare I say the meat of the design? It’s now placed and you’re ready to start dressing it up. You feel good about it and can start to see it’s potential. This could also represent the solidification of your concept. Now you’re off and running.

The Bad Idea vs. Good Idea: Now that you are off and running, the art director comes in and says “hey let’s add (fill in the blank), and being the designer, you advise against it but the art director just encourages you that it will make the design better. Your concept is now heading into a different direction. The risk doesn’t feel right, its scary and unknown. Just when you thought the sweet honey ham was paired perfectly with the sharp sundried tomato feta cheese spread the fresh tomato’s get invited to the party.

The Internal Review: Now the fun continues, when the first draft of your slightly altered baby goes out to the team. What comes back is every suggestion under the sun. With a page full of red and a bruised baby, you head back to your computer and try to clean up the mess of tangled words and “make the logo bigger” phrases. You pick and pull and moan and grown thinking of your original idea you get mad and just start throwing your keyboard and saying words that truckers commonly use as salutations.

The Wrap Up: You finally get your computer up and running again and calm down from your  2 year-old tantrum and get back to work. It comes to a point that you can’t rework – what you reworked. Knowing that you put tons of time into it; you walk away and close the file and come back fresh. Time passes and you come to your senses and complete the piece.

The Reveal: The time has come for you to show your piece to the client, you crack it open and by the holy grace of God himself, your hard work pays off. You reveal your masterpiece and get rave reviews and people love it. Now if they only knew what you had to go through to get this master piece into its current condition, they would fall to their knees in admiration, but that’s just not the case. The beautiful end product, its what we get praised for, the long road of risks, research and hard work comes to a close in a matter of moments then… its off to the next project. This one is eaten, plate licked cleanand hopefully – most importantly – paid for.

Sun dried tomato feta cheese ham rapper
- 1 wrap of your choice
- 4 slices of honey ham
- 2 tb sp. sun dried tomato feta cheese spread
- 4 wedges of tomato
- lettuce

Spread, layer, wrap. Served with fresh strawberries and salt and vinegar kettle cooked chips.