Be Noticed, Be Different

Hey, I received something so cool late last week and I've decided to share it with the world via this here lil' blog. I've worked with Trucker's Connection magazine for about 15 years now. If you're in trucking, you know this magazine. If you're not in trucking but you know me, you know this magazine. It's a magazine for truck drivers, coming out monthly, digest sized. You know, Reader's Digest, Golf Digest...altho somehow Golf Digest manages to call itself that while being a full size magazine. How does that work? Truth in advertising, anybody, anybody?

I digress. When I first came on board here, we used to feature a fancy, pretty, shiny truck driving down the road on each and every cover. We were original that way. Then we transformed into having topic-specific front covers. If the main feature inside were about money, we might have a driver standing with a wad of cash in his hand. If we were talking about who to trust to fix your rig, we'd have a guy waist deep under the hood on the cover. And in those years, we occasionally had an illustrator draw a front cover, still featuring an article inside, but we could be more clever because when you work with an artist, the sky's the limit.

We noticed quickly that the hand-drawn covers were wildly popular with drivers. Magazines flew off the racks when we had illustrations. And when you're in publishing, being noticed among all the competitors sitting alongside you is critical. These illustrated covers were different and we were noticed more because of them. So after a couple years, we made the genius leap to having every cover be illustrated. And that's where we are today. We have fun with these images--sometimes greatly exaggerating the theme of a feature, sometimes just capturing an idea in a way that a photo can't. To be noticed, be different. And that's what we are.

So I meet with my illustrator Joe every month to bounce ideas and sketch rough covers for consideration. And when he heard I'd started a blog, Joe did a caricature of me. Actually, this guy is known to sit in any public place and just start sketching on paper or even a napkin someone around him. He's very astute when it comes to bringing out the traits of someone's personality through features in the sketch. Take a look at my animated mug to the left. Here's a bigger shot:



He's talented, right? And clearly thinks I have a much bigger rack than I actually do, but hey. Perks of knowing an illustrator. Ha! The two things I noticed (after the rack) were the size of my mouth and my hand gesturing. Ok, the hand thing I gotta give him because I'm Italian and absolutely always talk with my hands. I don't even realize I'm doing it until I hit someone nearby accidentally or knock over a drink of notoriously hot liquid. Hand-gesturing? Guilty.

But the mouth? What's the implication there? Big mouth. Of course, this is the typical female in me managing to turn something that might be intended as flattering into a derogative. "Wow, your hair looks great today" is heard in my mind as "Your hair typically looks like crap and yet you somehow managed to make something work with it today. Amazing." Right? Ladies? I'm not alone in this. "Have you lost weight?" I actually hear this a lot (thanks to my preference for comfy clothes rather than fitted stuff; I'm no slave to fashion) and I think it'd be a great complement if indeed I had lost weight. But since I haven't, it just means someone thought I was fat before. It's just the way my mind is wired. Turns out, Joe said my smile was one of the most eye-catching things about me so he played it up. Yeah, fast thinking.

Anyway, I thought it was a cool to have a snapshot of me in the same look of the book I've poured my heart and soul (and rack) into for so many years. And I thought it'd be cool to include it here. Now you now me, now you know the cartoon me and now you'll instantly recognize my magazine that I insist you pick up, read cover to cover and then call a few advertisers out of because that's who pays the bills.

And I'm going to give Joe a plug. If you're ever interested in a caricature of you, your kids (kids love these), for a birthday present, etc, check him out here: http://www.joedinicola.com/ or http://joedinacola.blogspot.com/ Ask him for the Big Rack Special; he'll know what you mean.