Frying Pan and Cows

September 8, 2009 by Taylor Studios in General

One of my first big projects at Taylor was working the Final Graphic Design phase (basically creating and finalizing all the graphics in the gallery before we print them) for Frying Pan Farm Park Visitor Center. It was a really cool exhibit showing a lot of old photography and farm artifacts from the 1930s and describing what it was like to live there and work on a farm. My job in this phase was to locate photos that corresponded to the text written by our interpreter and illustrate graphics based on old photography for the interactives.

Sounds pretty simple in concept right?

I didn’t realize there were so many ways to draw a cow udder. “The tip should be a little more square…” “No, it should taper towards the end…” “Actually they’d be a bit fatter for this breed…”

I grew up in a small farm town. So small, in fact, that I lived on the 400 block of West Main Street and that was the edge of town. I remember cows would graze out the back window of my high school and would stare at me in my biology class. I didn’t know anything about cows other than they were good with cheese and a bun. I’ve only milked a cow once, and that was at a fair, and I was holding a cheeseburger in my other hand. So, you could say my bovine knowledge is fairly limited.

Luckily, the Frying Pan staff was extremely helpful in identifying families and even individuals in the old photos and I am eternally grateful to have access to experienced and knowledgeable people who know this stuff.

Posted by: Matt