Making a little upgrade to our blog posts and this one feels like a “Duh, why weren’t we already doing this!?” We will now provide our blog posts in audio form! We get how busy everyone is and as much as you may have an interest in what we are up to, there’s only so much time in a day and let’s face it I can be chatty.
So we thought it would be good to share the blog in both written form (as we’ve been doing) and also an audio file for your listening pleasure. I don’t know if you’ve heard but we’ve got all the equipment to do some pretty fabulous audio. Plus, we have exclusive access to two professional narrators. Whoa, how could we NOT do this?!
If reading is your jam, then proceed as always, but just know that if you have a crazy week and don’t have time; you will now have the option to listen to our blog while you walk the dog, grocery shop or drive the kids to that thing. #life
In last week’s post I shared about flying to New Jersey for an audition with Audible. The travel portion of the trip went without a hitch; from catching my 6am flight to Lyft-ing myself to downtown Newark. As someone who doesn’t travel a ton I was super-pleased with how it all came together. (Dean can attest to how I wouldn’t shut-up about my paperless boarding pass.)
Unfortunately, the weather was a bit dreary so wandering around the city wasn’t an advisable option, but between the local Dunkin’ Donuts (with free wifi) and public library I was able to occupy the time until my 3:00 pm audition.
At 2:40 pm, I headed over to Audible to give myself a little buffer of time for check-in. I did not travel over 800 miles to be late to this thing.
In the interest of documentation, when I got to the lobby I recorded this:
Afterwards, I went over to the reception desk, filled out a visitor NDA so I wouldn’t go blabbing about anything that’s still on the down-low, then was told to help myself to a beverage in their “pantry” (‘cuz of course they have a beverage hub called a pantry) and that someone would be down shortly to get me.
You know those moments when it feels like you are either having an Oprah-type spiritual revelation or are being punk’d?
I sat down with a clear sightline to the elevators and my beverage at 2:50 pm. Pleased that I was early (#PunctualityMatters), I took a deep breath and did my best to project a breezy, confident, I-do-this-all-the-time attitude.
Watching various people coming in and out of the building did give me a chance to play a few lightning rounds of “What’s My Name?”, where I attempt to guess a person’s name just by looking at them. Of course, unless I’m at an event where name badges are part of the attire, there’s no real satisfying conclusion to the game, but it doesn’t deter me from playing.
It is now 3:00 pm.
There is no sign that anyone is coming. (#Breathe) As I thought about the initial instructions I had been given, I don’t recall “wait in the lobby” being a part of it. In fact, I specifically recall the phrase “go up to the 16th floor.”
I mosey on back to the security desk to make doubly sure they don’t just want to hand me a badge and let me see myself up. They assured me it’s a firm no-can-do on setting me loose in the building and, FYI, no one is answering the multiple messages they have sent about me. Cool.
As I sit back down I think through my options, as well as entertain the possible scenarios occurring on the 16th floor that may be preventing someone from responding. Office birthday party got out of hand? Food poisoning from that new sushi place around the corner? Hostage situation?
It is now 3:10 pm.
I decide to send an email notifying my contact that I am indeed here, but Security Sally is doing a whole Gandalf “You Shall Not Pass” thing, and while I’m glad to know the building is all Fort Knox, I’d really like to move along with this audition so can you red rover, red rover and send someone to help Rebecca come over? (actual message was more business-y)
To ratchet up the tension, my phone (faithful companion this whole trip) betrays me and decides sending emails isn’t something it can do right now, but feel free to ask it to send this email later. #NotTodaySatan
Next, I call Dean using my alarmingly-calm-and-quiet voice asking him to email the message from my computer. Doing so helps ward off any thoughts I begin to entertain about how far I could actually get if I jumped the turnstile and made a run for the elevators.
It is now 3:20 pm.
Fortunately, clearer heads prevailed and I went back to the security desk to see if I could enlist any allies for #TeamSendMeTo16thFloor. There had been a shift change (which made sense because I’ve been there for about 5 hours) and the new gal was a little more forthcoming with information.
Basically, my name was not on the list it should have been on so that’s why they can’t let me through, but since no one is responding they have now sent someone up to the studios to get some answers. Ultimately, a lovely person showed up, apologized for the mishap, took me up to the studio and I crushed my audition. #LoveAHappyEnding
My little detour was a reminder of how things go sometimes. I thought the audition was going to be the toughest part of my day, but it ended up being the 30-minute-escape-room I had to navigate in the lobby beforehand.
While I’ve never done an actual escape room, I have seen people post pictures of themselves afterwards, so in that spirit when I came back down to the lobby before I left I asked someone to snap a picture of me in front of the Audible sign because I wanted to remember how I earned this moment.
This week I opened up voting for my latest pet product; this time it’s all about the piggies. I don’t usually create multiple versions to vote on but after my cat people misstep (read all about it here), I didn’t want to take any chances with offending the pig community.
As with the previous pet graphics I’ve created, I want to take the characteristics of the animal and apply them to the letters that spell the word. It isn’t necessarily to make the letters look like the animal, although it may sometimes result in that or at least that’s what people may see.
Similar to the “cat person” graphic, it did take a while to work out a solution I was happy with. I’ve decided with this series to use at least 3 animal characteristics, but I’m open to more if it works. For “pig” I knew I would use a snout and ears, plus some type of curly tail, but then I also liked the idea of adding in the hooves.
I explored with a variety of types of fonts; serif, block serif, san serif to see which worked well with the various characteristics. The snout being the dot of the “I” was pretty much a constant, and while I started with both ears on the letter “p” and the curly tail as the “g” the discovery of making the entire “g” as the tail was the turning point.
Once the “g” was created from the curly tail, then the beginning of it became an ear. I then saw that I could flip the “g” to create the letter “p” which gave harmony to the letters, while also creating an overall roundness to the graphic.
My big question and why I decided to open this up for voting, is whether a person that likes pigs would refer to themselves as a “pig person” or would they rather say “I’m a pig person.” SIDENOTE: Never do an online search for “pig person.”
I have posted the graphics onto Facebook and Instagram and I’m getting quite varied responses, so I thought I would include it here in case any of you hadn’t seen it or has yet to share your thoughts. Please feel free to post thoughts or comments.
Whatever I end up going with I’m pleased with how this series is shaping up and I’m excited to figure out how to get these graphics to a larger audience.
Here’s the audio version of this week’s post. Even though you may have read the article, you may enjoy hearing your’s truly reading it.
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