Category: Back to School

#29 Success & Nothing Less

Chaz DeSimone Leave a comment

Click to view full-​size or download hi-​rez image for gallery-​quality printing and framing.
This is a high-​resolution pdf & may take a few minutes to download.
Find printing tips & framing ideas here.

Download to print special size for Balboa students’ notebooks: 8.5 x 11 inches

Amper­Art #29, Suc­cess & Noth­ing Less, was inspired by Bal­boa Ele­men­tary School, for it is their mot­to, and it’s where I learned my abc’s, in Glen­dale, Cal­i­for­nia. (It’s also where I learned the dif­fer­ence betweens it’s and its.)

The type­style is Aachen, same as used on their school sig­nage. The amper­sand is derived from the Z in the team’s name, Blaz­ers. The col­ors used in this edi­tion are, of course, the school colors.
The phrase was made famous by Snoop Dogg on the show Entourage where he said, “Suc­cess and noth­ing less, man!”

One of my favorite quotes about suc­cess is by Jack Can­field: “If you love your work, if you enjoy it, you’re already a suc­cess.” I guess I’m a suc­cess then, for I love cre­at­ing Amper­Art and all my oth­er graph­ic design.

That and many oth­er quotes on suc­cess can be found here. And there’s a Face­book page called Suc­ces­sAnd­Noth­in­g­Less.

The Leona L. DeSimone Award

I have always been grate­ful that I went to three tremen­dous pub­lic schools, all in the Glen­dale, Cal­i­for­nia Uni­fied School Dis­trict: Bal­boa Ele­men­tary, Toll Jr. High and Her­bert Hoover High School. I even went to Glen­dale Junior Col­lege but did­n’t learn much there as I was already more focused on run­ning a graph­ics business.

It was at Bal­boa School, dur­ing 4th Grade, that I lost my father to emphy­se­ma. I was the old­est of four, with a sis­ter and two broth­ers. Our moth­er strug­gled, I mean real­ly strug­gled, to clothe and feed us, hold­ing down a job at a lunch counter in a vit­a­min store. Some­how she always had time for us kids and made sure we were to school on time, and helped us with our home­work. All the while putting up with tantrums from me, the spoiled firstborn.

I’ll nev­er for­get see­ing Mom cry when mon­ey was short, count­ing pen­nies to feed us, going with­out din­ner her­self. Or walk­ing five miles to work in the blaz­ing heat when the bus­es went on strike.

We did­n’t have much mon­ey but I don’t think there was a fam­i­ly in Glen­dale any rich­er than ours with love.

Sev­er­al years ago my sis­ter Roslyn set up an annu­al schol­ar­ship at Bal­boa Ele­men­tary, in our moth­er’s name, for a deserv­ing stu­dent (espe­cial­ly if their fam­i­ly was in sim­i­lar cir­cum­stances that ours was in), and each year one of us sib­lings presents the award.

I was hon­ored to present the schol­ar­ship at the end of the 2012 school year to a spe­cial stu­dent who was also raised by a sin­gle moth­er, and who came to school ear­ly and stayed late to work on the com­put­ers, since the fam­i­ly could not afford their own.

Upon arriv­ing at the school for the pre­sen­ta­tion, I dis­cov­ered the school mot­to is “Suc­cess & Noth­ing Less” so of course that would be an upcom­ing Amper­Art piece.

This year’s Leona L. DeS­i­mone Schol­ar­ship recip­i­ent is a shin­ing exam­ple of one who aspires to achieve the very mean­ing of her school’s mot­to, “Suc­cess & Noth­ing Less.”

Production notes:
Original size: 20 x 30 inches
Program: Illustrator
Font: Aachen
Ampersand: hand-​drawn, based on school team lettering

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#26 Reading Writing & Arithmetic

Chaz DeSimone Leave a comment

#26 Reading Writing & Arithmetic
Click to view full-​​​size or down­load hi-​​​rez image for gallery-​​​quality print­ing and framing.
This is a high-​​​resolution pdf & may take a few min­utes to download.
Find print­ing tips & fram­ing ideas here.

It seems today the 3 R’s should be replaced with the 3 C’s: 

Com­put­ers, Cal­cu­la­tors & Cellphones.

Ide­al­ly, it would be the 3 R’s + the 5 C’s. Take the big yel­low school­bus  OVER HERE  to read about that.

But what­ev­er the phrase is, there’s an amper­sand in it. The sym­bol in this edi­tion resem­bles a plus sign (for arith­metic of course) but I have a feel­ing it is still an amper­sand in abbre­vi­at­ed form. Here is an illus­tra­tion of my theory:

Start­ing with the typ­i­cal scrib­bled amper­sand, left, and evolv­ing through the “scrip­ti­er” ver­sion next to it  (which is the basis for sev­er­al amper­sands in script fonts) to the next two casu­al amper­sands in the mid­dle (which could dou­ble as plus signs) to the final mark which is a true plus sign — still mean­ing “et” or “and” — you see how I fig­ure the evolution.

Anoth­er the­o­ry, though forced and most like­ly incor­rect, is the clip­ping of the small area where the lines form a plus. This is only part of the “t” and does not include the “e” in the for­ma­tion of a true amper­sand, which is the lig­a­ture “et” mean­ing “and” in Latin:

Now to destroy my the­o­ry, the plus sign is called just that: “plus” which means “more” in Latin. So is it real­ly a hasti­ly scrib­bled ver­sion of the amper­sand or not? I have no choice but to stick to my own the­o­ry (fac­tor­ing in artis­tic license) so I may dis­play the plus sign as an amper­sand and issue this lat­est Amper­Art editon.

listen up!My first clue, in first grade

It was in first grade that I became wary of the school sys­tem. Or any author­i­ty at all.

Before I even start­ed kinder­garten I was enthralled with type. I remem­ber my dad point­ing out numer­als to me in books, and their shapes were embed­ded in my mind. I espe­cial­ly remem­ber the num­ber 4 because of my first warn­ing of “the system”:

In first grade we were prac­tic­ing writ­ing numer­als. Even as a kid I tried emu­lat­ing how things were done pro­fes­sion­al­ly, so I drew the num­ber 4 as I had seen on many print­ed pages, the top strokes meet­ing at an apex like this:

The next thing I knew, the crag­gy old teacher drew an X over my effort, stat­ing I did not draw the num­ber as instructed.

 

 Miss H —  — - (no won­der she was “Miss” — who would want to mar­ry her?) said I must draw the fig­ure accord­ing to the rules, like this:

or 

(I don’t remem­ber which and I don’t care — prob­a­bly the first.)

From that point on I was wary of all teach­ing, instruc­tions, opin­ions and espe­cial­ly rules and reg­u­la­tions. If I had “fol­lowed orders” and done what all the oth­er stu­dents were doing (which of course earned them straight A’s) I just might be wait­ing tables or mop­ping floors instead of design­ing cor­po­rate logos and best­selling books.

I have since always weighed what I heard and read, ran it through my own analy­sis, and thought inde­pen­dent­ly of the masses. 

Do I believe in rules? Yes. They are for those who won’t think intel­li­gent­ly for them­selves. I just wish there were less rules and more intel­li­gent people.

Pro­duc­tion notes for #26 Reading Writing & Arithmetic:
Orig­i­nal size: 20x30 inches
Pro­gram: Illustrator
Font: Century Schoolbook