Preparing for the New Year

Geof Huth, "eXmaSscard # 24" (29 Dec 2010)In the past, I would make sure to design the family end-of-the-year holiday card before Christmas, but I don't worry about that deadline anymore. Nowadays, my deadline is December 31st, the end of the year. So I've done well by completing this card two days early (though I might try to find different envelopes tomorrow for this little publication, maybe blue envelopes to match the blue paper and ink of the card).

The genesis of this card is like that of all of these cards: I wait until an idea occurs to me when I'm not thinking of the card. At first, I thought of making the cards wider than they are tall and to draw something across the eventual crease in the wrap-around cover. But that wasn't enough, so I didn't start working on that idea. Today, while finishing a little prep work for the transfer this week of more of my papers to the University at Albany, I came across a partial ream of blue speckled card stock, and that told me that blue was the color to use.

With that color idea in place, I put together my card tonight. Expecting to create an asemic work, I instead created a semantic work that appears to be asemic. And then I obscured the simple words on the card further by drawing between and around all parts of the text. This has come out okay. Now, all I'll need to do is write notes to be in these cards and send them out. . .

Geof Huth, "eXmaSscard # 24" (29 Dec 2010)
ecr. l'inf.