Ya’ just never know who’ll “walk-in”

everyday a new customer, a different challenge. makin’ friends at the doughnut shop…

by Art Chantry (art@artchantry.com):

One of the very best things about doing graphic design for a living is that every client presents an adventure. when a client walks in the door, they present an entire unknown new universe to explore and learn just to be able to BEGIN to help them out with what you can provide. It’s the one part of this job that never ever gets boring – learning new worlds. one day it might be the city of Tacoma looking for some promotional design to help brand an annual arts event, the next day it could be a glassblowing artist who supports his art by making glass dildoes. you just never know.

One of the VERY best things about this process is that you never know where it may go. a client may walk in looking for a poster and, once you get to know what’s going on, may walk back out with an entire logo/identity/brand campaign. one friend of mine was hired by a company who repaired and rebuilt used airplane propellers (seems they are much more complex that one would imagine). It was two old school buddies who had been running this business together for over ten years. they simply approached my friend to design a new letterhead for their company. that’s it, a letterhead for business stationery and billing. they even intended to use the same logo straight across that they’d always used. a cinch project, right?

Well, my friend began his usual interview process to figure who these guys were, what they did, what their business was about, what their world was like. the process of sussing out a client can get very introspective for that client and these two guys were not introspective types – they were engineers. as my friend asked more questions about their market, their competition, their existing clientele, etc. he began to ask about their personal views of their work, their dreams and plans, their goals, their relationship. what quickly began to happen between these two old friends/business partners is that they began to realize they had completely different visions of what they were doing and what they were all about. the result over a short period of time was that they decided to break the partnership and start two separate companies. basically, the process caused the schism that resulted in one guy continuing with the existing business and the other guy going one way and the the other started an entirely new business. my friend got to finish up the letterhead job, he also got to do another identity package for the new company. all from a simple letterhead project. not bad, eh?

Another great success story relates to the image I show you. the ‘top pot’ doughnut guy is a man named Mark Klebeck. when I first met Mark, he approached me to work on a record cover for his band, ‘King of Hawaii’. Mark was the lead in the band and a killer guitarist. we hit it off and over the years I designed many record covers and dozens for gigposters for his group. we did great work together – a sort of dream client/collaborator.

However, Mark and his brother had other interests as well. they concepted and built-out (mark is an excellent cabinet maker) hip fun cafes, restaurants and coffee shops. they opened a series of cool and popular coffee shops in Seattle, each one a ‘hit’. the two of them together had a sort of Midas touch, creating great joints like ‘bauhaus books & coffee’ and the ‘zeitgeist’ coffee shops. they were obsessive junkers and had a warehouse full of cool architecture pieces and strange decorative objects and equipment they collected to use on these projects. their physical interior shop spaces are a wonder to behold.

Totally by accident, they tripped across a complete setup of doughnut making equipment in the back of an old warehouse place gathering dust. the proprietor was happy to get rid of it and they bought it for next to nothing. they had no idea what to do with it, they just wanted to have it. so, they shoved it into storage with their other junk. eventually, they were starting a new coffee shop project and decided their sales gimmick was going to be doughnuts (to help sell the coffee.) the business was called ‘top pot’ because they had a wonderful old neon sign from an old coffee shop in storage as well. they trademarked the existing logo of that old extinct coffee shop and adapted it to their needs.

They set up the junk equipment and went about learning to make doughnuts. after bringing some in chefs and some pros, they began to sell far more doughnuts than coffee. the rest is history. they are now considered one of the best doughnuts in the world and critics from all over the country come to Seattle to eat Top Pot doughnuts. they constantly get mentioned and reviewed superbly in gourmet magazines and television and radio. Top Pot doughnuts are a huge hit, a ripping success.

So, the ‘King of Hawaii’ is now the Top Pot ‘king of doughnuts’? there is no way I would have predicted that when I first encountered hi

a new client. so, you just never know where these things will end up. I mean, who knew?

Which brings me around the story I really want to tell. ever wonder WHY doughnut shops are so special? well, I think I know. It’s because of the alien/extraterrestrial walk-ins living among us. true fact!

When I lived in St. Louis, I had a really fun wonderful solo exhibit at a local amazing institution called “the city museum” (which should be internationally famous and isn’t because it’s in st. louis). at the opening, all sorts of St. Louis denizens emerged from the darkness to check out my work. It was a peculiar crowd – as all St. Louis crowds generally are.

There was one person there that really stood out from the rest, though. she was a very very old woman dressed in a hopelessly antique mink coat and a little black pillbox hat. she had one of those remarkably deeply lined faces that is often the subject of photographer’s studies. I mean, she was a magnificent face – like a dried apple. to top it off, she had badly applied makeup for the occasion and the face powder and heavy crooked red lipstick caked into the deep creases on her face like cracking putty. she was hard not to notice, but I really didn’t pay her any mind, I was pretty busy chatting with other hipsters. (I later learned that she was fabulously wealthy and was one of the biggest supporters of the local art museums.)

However, she bee-lined up to me and came right up into my face and said with complete sincerity, “I know you. you’re a walk-in like me. we can always spot each other.”

It was a little weird and off-putting. but, being generally polite, I asked the obvious question, “huh?” she jumped right in to explaining that she was actually an alien from another dimension/planet who had ‘walked-in’ to this woman’s body and was always on the look-out for other walk-ins like her to talk to. apparently It’s hard to find other walk-ins to compare notes with, ya know?

So, being intrigued (how could you NOT be?), I asked more. for instance, I was asking about the ‘other’ walk-ins, like where do you actually meet them? she expressed surprise that I didn’t know the answer to that (since I was a walk-in, too.) but, she commiserated that it was difficult at first to find others until she went to the doughnut shops. “you know about the doughnut shops, right?”

St. Louis had amazing old doughnut shops, some of them staying in the same location for over 100 years. the doughnuts were greasy and heavy and made you sick (you enjoyed them for hours), but St. Louis loved their doughnuts and traditionally had a daily breakfast of weak Folger’s coffee and a few apple fritters and a french crueller or two. St. Louis people also had that “midwest bulge” appearance about them. I even began to look like that myself.

Anyway, she said the first time she finally found another walk-in to talk to, it was at the doughnut shops. since then, it’s where she goes to be among her ‘type.’ alien walk-ins love doughnuts! again, who knew?

This astonished me. she just looked at me knowingly and nodded in silence, like a conspiracy was being acknowledged. I blurted out, “doughnuts? why doughnuts?”

She said, “when I met the first one, I asked the same thing. and the walk-in said that they loved doughnuts because they were so good.” the alien went on to say, “I just don’t understand you earthlings. you fight and you war and you kill. you eat meat and other animals. you wallow in blood. yet, you have DOUGHNUTS! why do you behave this way when when you have such perfect food?”

I sure couldn’t argue with that.

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