This graphic was made for the website of a band called Conjugal Visit. They were a high school garage band (one of the best activities in the world. I highly recommend it) from my hometown, and I'd known almost all their members for years. I'd designed their logo and so when they put up a homepage in late 1995, I made web graphics for that as well.

Sakura Tokyo is an excellent Japanese restaurant in Worcester, MA, and Conjugal Visit performed there at the Bar Mitzvah party of their keyboard player's brother. One section of the band's homepage was going to detail their shows, and each show was going to have a location logo at the top of it's respective page. Unfortunately, by the time the graphics and site were nearly finished, the band had split up. I was disappointed until I became the drummer of the group that sprang from its ashes.

Since this picture seems pretty straightforward, you probably want to know why I am calling attention to it. The reason is this: when I did this pic, back in '95, the graphics program I was using didn't scale things smoothly and it didn't anti-alias edges along the way (a process whereby graphics are smoothed out, to look less jagged). Because of this, I had to do this picture at the size you see it, anti-alias it by hand, and I do so pixel by pixel - for all 12,000 of them.

Today with Photoshop, in less than 2 minutes, I could have simply scanned the picture off the restaurant's menu and scaled it down to this size. Sometimes the progression of technology sucks: it can make a lot of real effort look like a waste.