Confessions of a Graphic Designer

Me, hugging my first dog, 1972. A baby boomer looks back. I think kids born in the 1950s and 1960s had the opportunity to try and fail, and their experiences engendered real, contextual learning that prepared them to succeed. Sometimes our parents would say, “good job,” but a pat on the back wasn’t the driving force propelling baby boomers to achieve. When I was in high school, I ran track. No one came to watch me at a track meet, but it didn't make me feel bad because no one else's parents were there, either. Participation in team sports was driven by the individual child and not by parents who herded or guided kids to take certain paths. Parents weren’t hyper-vigilant. I believe it's because it wasn't needed. For example, choosing to be part of a team meant there was an intrinsic desire to work cooperatively to achieve a goal. Improvements were based on learning from mistakes, and healthy competition provided important lessons. These days I think it’...

It’s weird how you can be merrily be rolling along when something you don’t want to happen, happens. I was in the eighth grade when my family moved from Seattle to Arizona. Middle school is an awkward time, and I was just hitting my stride socially and emotionally. Suddenly I found myself leaving my friends and life for a place with virtually no racial diversity—very different from Seattle. I was initially regarded as somewhat of a freak. Even so, I managed to adjust to Arizona, and after two years, my dad’s Boeing assignment was done, so we were able to return to Seattle. When we got home, everything was different. Our house had been rented, and the yard, which had always been meticulously maintained, had been completely neglected. In fact, as we drove up to the house, Caesar, a neighborhood kid, was playing with friends and popped his head up from the tall grass that, much to the chagrin of our neighbors, used to be our lawn. The worst disappointment was learning my parents ...

Through The Seattle Public Library The Sally Goldmark Library in Madrona is our local branch. Sometimes I think my husband, David, and I are the only people in Seattle who don’t subscribe to Netflix or Hulu. I guess one reason why is, we aren’t huge consumers of video content and we'd regard it as wasteful to pay for something we won’t use. We like watching films and television series, but since we opened Alki Surf Shop , we have even less discretionary time, including TV time. We spend an average of about an hour each evening watching films or programs. Truth be told, we’d dearly love to "cut the Comcast cord," but there are certain channels that would be a bummer to lose, like Bloomberg News, and any channel that airs "Law and Order" episodes :) The concept of getting rid of cable became more of a possibility when David discovered a treasure trove of content available through The Seattle Public Library (SPL). He regularly visits the SPL web ...

This final day of 2015 started out pretty normally. Woke up, fed the cats, put on my make-up, got dressed, then looked at my to-do list. All doable! I needed to pick up my car from my mechanic of 19 years, and no one was around to drive me there, so I called Uber . Uber was in 50 percent surge-price mode, so I said, forget that! Opened Lyft and put in my location and request... Lyft did something weird. I watched the Lyft car circle around, then was notified the car had arrived. Scanning all directions—no Lyft. The driver calls and tells me he is in West Seattle. Uh, yeah. I was 20 minutes away in Madrona. Wonder what happened? Obviously I couldn't wait for him, so I called my old standby, Farwest Taxi. They said it would be 15 minutes until a cab would reach me. No thanks. In this age of "I have no time to wait," I called Yellow Cab next. They arrived in 5 minutes. An older East African gentleman was driving and he wouldn't exceed 25 MPH....

After traveling in New York for several days to attend a Verizon Summit (#vzsummit), and enjoying meals at fabulous restaurants there, I returned, craving home made comfort food. Just before the trip, I roasted a pretty sizable pumpkin (uncarved), yielding a two large sheet pans of delicious pieces of roasted pumpkin. So before heading into Alki Surf Shop on Saturday, I searched for a pumpkin soup recipe, and found one that looked good, but I didn’t have some of the ingredients. Never one to let a missing ingredient stop me, I forged on! The original recipe, Thai Pumpkin Soup with Coconut Milk, called for lemongrass, fresh coriander, vegetable stock and coconut milk. But I didn’t have any of those things. So here’s what I did: Terri’s Pantry Pumpkin Soup Ingredients: 2 TB Olive Oil 1.5 medium onions, diced 5 cloves of garlic left whole 3.5 lbs. of roasted pumpkin, diced* 1 tsp ground coriander 2 tsp curry powder 2 TB fresh minced ginger** (which BTW, was f...

It’s been a year since my husband, Kahuna Dave, and I opened our store, Alki Surf Shop, in West Seattle. The past 12 months have been filled with lots of laughter and learning, and we’ve met thousands of great people from nearby and all over the world. We’ve made new friends, rekindled past friendships, and love being a part of the Alki Beach community. It feels like we’ve been on a business “graduate school” crash course. We're smarter store owners now, and continue to evolve. Among some of the things we've learned: How to create a positive experience for people who visit; how to identify products that make sense; and how to work more effectively with suppliers. My husband's vision of "Hawaii-Beach-California" is fun, and comes through clearly in our store, from the fixtures to the colors and raffia and bamboo trim. One of the things I made a conscious effort to do is to incorporate my friends in the creation of our unique space. We’re constantly hear...

It’s been said, “Life’s a beach,” and in our case, it’s true! Eleven months ago, my husband, “Kahuna Dave” and I launched our store, Alki Surf Shop on Alki Beach in West Seattle. It took extraordinary effort and thinking to create such a unique place. It’s not just the fact that the “physical plant” is fun and adorable, but we go further to make sure our customers have a positive experience in every way we can. As Kahuna Dave says, Alki Beach is Seattle’s playground, and when you’re there, you’re having fun. It starts with the music we pipe out onto the sidewalk. We actually see people outside on the sidewalk dancing before they enter our store. We have an incredible UE Boom bluetooth speaker, which acts like a pied piper, drawing them up into our space. And when a customer leaves, we often give them something extra to remember. Our stock-in-trade is genuine Alki-branded tees, hoodies, and tank tops, but we sell all manner of beach essentials: sunglasses, sunscre...

My sister, Melissa, has been on a mission to clean out our childhood home. During the course of unearthing some truly terrible pottery by yours truly, she came across a variety of artifacts as well as some notes written by our mom. We lost our mom to cancer eight years ago. She entered  Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle, and about a week later, she died. It was just like our mom to be selfless, and not trouble us to care for her over the course of a long, drawn-out illness. I think we all expected her to get well. She had celebrated her 88th birthday that year — a special year in Japanese culture. My brother Dave, and his wife Carol, treated everyone to a limousine and dinner at  Canlis for a very special celebration. It was truly amazing. Quite a few years earlier, I had an idea of asking my mom to write a family history. After looking at a number of books on the subject, which made the process look daunting, I found a format (it was the dot-matrix days) print...

What's more important? Building a brand, or serving your customers? Happy buyers are essential to making your business succeed. Without customer service, it doesn’t matter if you’ve created a great brand. Ignoring buyers or potential customers is counter-productive to the ultimate goal of attaining success. That being said, a strong brand identity is like a way-finding system for your customers, so it’s very important, too. It signals what you do, how you position yourself and lets your customers understand how you fit into the marketplace, and how it relates to them. Customers encounter your brand and should quickly understand a brand’s personality and position among competitors and decide whether there is a good fit. That’s how the Graham Cracker Cookie Crumbles Some of you know, my husband, David Horsfall , and I opened Alki Surf Shop  in Seattle seven months ago. It may be February, and so what if Boston is buried in 100 inches of snow ( @chillie31512 )?...