You see that picture, right? Simone Biles next to Shaq. Makes your brain go ‘huh?!’ every single time. It’s just one of those images that sticks with you, you know? The sheer difference, yet both of them absolute legends in what they do. Wild.
Anyway, that whole size and scale thing, it really whacked me over the head a while back when I was wrestling with this project for the local community center. Yeah, sounds dead easy, a simple display board. Wasn’t. Not by a long shot.
So, they wanted me to put together this showcase. Something to highlight different achievements from folks around our town. And the range, oh boy, the range was something else. We’re talking about the massive success of the hospital’s new wing fundraiser – that’s a huge deal, big money, big impact. And then, in the same breath, they wanted to feature Mrs. Gable’s prize-winning zucchini from the county fair. Now, don’t get me wrong, that zucchini was a monster, a real champion of a vegetable, but how do you put that next to a hospital wing on a single board and make it all feel… right?
I swear, every time I sat down with my bits of paper and sketches, that image of Simone and Shaq would just float into my mind. It was like the universe telling me, “See? It can be done!” But then I’d look at my corkboard and a photo of a zucchini and a blueprint snippet, and it felt impossible. Simone and Shaq, they just are. Their presence does the talking. A zucchini and a hospital wing? They need a bit more help to share the stage gracefully.
I must’ve spent a good week, maybe more, just trying different approaches. My first brilliant idea was to go proportional. Real genius, that was. Mrs. Gable’s zucchini basically vanished, became a tiny green smudge. The hospital wing, naturally, ate up like, half the board. People would’ve needed a magnifying glass for one and stood across the room for the other. Not good.
Then I figured, “Okay, categories! I’ll group ’em!” Sports, community service, gardening triumphs, you name it. But the committee, bless their hearts, they had this vision of ‘cohesion’ and ‘every achievement shining equally.’ Cohesion is easy when you’re talking about two global sports icons. Try getting cohesion between a bake-off trophy and a new town park initiative when you’ve only got so much space.
I remember shuffling pictures and bits of text around for hours. Tried different colored backing cards. Played with font sizes until my eyes crossed. At one point, I even tried this fancy overlapping collage thing. My daughter walked in, took one look, and just asked if I was okay. That’s usually a sign you’re way off track.
So, what did I end up doing? After all that fuss? I kind of threw in the towel on making it some perfectly balanced, visually mind-blowing masterpiece like that iconic photo. Instead, I went for stories. Simple, short stories for each achievement. Used a more scrapbooky, handmade kind of feel. Lots of little handwritten-style notes and less formal framing. It wasn’t sleek. It definitely wasn’t what I first imagined.
But you know what? People actually stopped. They read the stories. They talked about them. Maybe that “Simone and Shaq” level of visual punch isn’t always the goal, especially with everyday stuff. Sometimes, just letting each story have its own little space to breathe, no matter how big or small the subject, is what really connects. That whole project was a trip. Just me, a glue stick, and the faint, amusing mental image of a tiny gymnast and a giant basketball player judging my layout choices. What a job that was.
