Refresher

To those of you coming to my blog for the first time, welcome, to those returning, thanks for coming by again.

This post is directed to those of you here for the first time. Please allow me to fill you in on a few details about what my thesis project is about.

In an effort to explore American culture, I found that Americans love to eat. However what we are eating combined with a very sedentary lifestyle has had a negative effect on our health. Unhealthy weight gain has resulted in a decline in our quality of life. This will have an even greater impact on the newest generation of Americans. Doctors are predicting that if our current lifestyle trends continue, children born today will have a shorter life expectancy than their parents. My thesis was created as an attempt to re-direct this course.

Eat & Act: Grow Healthy with your Child is an organization dedicated to educating and empowering parents of young children to help parents instill the value of healthy living early in life. To do this, I wanted to create a forum for parents to talk to their children about healthy lifestyle habits. This is how SIMON, the lima bean was born.

Over the course of the last year and a half i have created a brand, written, illustrated, and designed a series of SIMON childrens books, as well as a hand book for parents, in the hopes of creating a partnership between parent and child. Each one's health depends on the other. SIMON's stories create excitement around healthy lifestyle habits, and it is a parent's responsibility to respond to this excitement and lead by example.

By addressing this issue early in life, health is approached in a preventative manor. I strongly feel that a battle prevented is a battle won.

Thanks again for stopping by. Lots of work has been done since the last few posts have gone up, soon I will be printing and binding, and before I know it May 15th will be here and it will all be over with. Well, the MFA thesis part. I plan to shop the SIMON books around in the hopes of getting them published. So keep an eye out at your local bookstore, you may just find SIMON sitting on a shelf. :)

Final Covers, Odds & Ends

These are the final final final covers. No more changes! Or else I will pull my hair out. It feels good to finally complete something in this whole thing.

To get a closer look at the covers check out this PDF.

I'm preparing the Simon books for printing. That means buying stock photos, fixing images that run across the gutter, converting images to CMYK (per printer's request), crossing my t's and dotting my i's. When that is done, I'll send them out for one final crit, and then it's off to the printers. Meanwhile I'm working on finalizing who will have the honor of binding these things. I'm hoping to be holding these books in my hands by the middle to end of April.

You are probably wondering where the parent handbook is in all of this. Let's just say, it's patiently waiting for me to finish with the childrens books. Simon is the gem of my thesis, I need him to shine brightest.

Despite pulling all nighters already at this point in my final semester in school (on a Saturday no less), I'm thrilled with the results. It's good to do something I feel incredibly proud of. :)