What does this photograph have to do with rowing or rowing posters?

Nothing!

Nothing obvious, anyways. I took that photo in the Italian market neighborhood of Philadelphia — visually striking, not an every day scene for most of us. And that’s the point. You’re always looking, not knowing if there will be an underlying unity to your butterfly collection of images, just being spontaneous and open to the world around you.

As a designer, visual note taking provides the raw material for ones work, building a vocabulary of materials, forms, textures and patterns with nature as a bountiful source. Looking again at those rams horns, the ringed texture and powerful, torqued forms could be studied in depth through drawing.

Eventually those old horns might turn up in a rowing poster design in some subtle form I might recognize…even if it doesn’t butt me in the head.