Open RP Post

[aucourant]

[ Give me a starter, a prompt, or just a blank top level. Anything goes. ]

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[inkingfeathers]

It isn't the first time he's gotten a call out of the blue from an advertising firm, not even the first time it's a firm in a different city. It's good timing, he's just finished off place cards for a wedding and nothing else needs to be started for two weeks, so he hops on a train—he always takes the train when he can, flying is…still a little weird, even after this long—and it's a long trip but a quiet one, the best kind. He gets some work done, a few example pieces for this new client. Even as bumpy as the train gets, each pen stroke is flawless, but why not? He might as well use what he can do, as well as he can do it. It isn't like they'll know he lettered all of this on the train, right?

Pen heads up the stairs with the crowd and out the front doors at Union Station and takes a few moments to get his bearings back. It's been a while since he's been to Chicago, somehow he just hadn't gotten back here since…is it the 60s, really? But New York is hard to leave sometimes, it's one of the things he likes about it, that weird sense of permanent impermanence. It changes all the time, but something fundamental stays the same, and now he's romanticizing the city he lives in instead of walking to the Metro or getting a cab. Good, Pen, great start. Feel the dedication.

He's still early to RGM, portfolio in hand, and he's pointed upstairs, and then he's pointed along the floor until he finally pokes his head in the door marked 'Connor.'

"Hey. Are you, you're Connor? I'm, ah, I'm Pen Gregory, I think we have a meeting. Soon. Not yet. I'm early, sorry, I can wait out here…" He glances over his shoulder at the bullpen, assorted couches, nothing much like a waiting room. "…somewhere."

[aucourant]

Connor sat on his couch, feet propped up on the table, hands folded behind his head. Eyes closed. Against the opposite wall was a huge display board tacked all over with bits of what appeared to be printer paper attacked with ball point pen and yellow highlighter. They couldn't exactly be called drawings, but there were a lot of boxes with squiggles and stick figures. Half sheets, crudely cut or torn, proclaimed various brand names. Pretty big ones, too.

At least Connor HAD been working. At one point. By the slight tilt of his head and relaxed droop of his jaw, he might have possibly fallen asleep. Which was surprising given the three extra large (and empty) cups on his desk. He snapped up the moment he heard Pen's voice, though, looking around like a child who'd just been caught red-handed. He squinted at the man in his door, startled and perplexed.

After a few moments of awkward silence, his face suddenly brightened. "Pen!" Then his face scrunched down, and he said softly to himself, "....I had a meeting with someone named Pen?" He shook his head, and brightened again. "Right! The letters guy." He got to his feet and started gesturing for him to come inside. "How could I forget that? The letter guy named Pen. Makes total sense."

[inkingfeathers]

"Heh, yeah, it's a little on the nose, isn't it?" Pen admitted with a sheepish duck of his head as he stepped inside, looking with interest at the board. Looked like two or three projects at least, in the brainstorming phase. Some pretty impressive clients too. Working hard, if the empty coffees were any sign, not to mention the mid-day nap. But hey, sometimes that helped the creative process, right?

This was one of those more casual places, which made him relax a little bit. It was always a little bit of an unknown, dealing with a new group of humans, but he knew the types he got along with the best, and they were never the type to stand on ceremony.

Pen unshouldered his bag and reached inside for his portfolio, including the pieces he'd done on the train. "I wasn't really sure what you were looking for, exactly, so I just brought a little of everything," he started, handing it over. "Place cards and invitations, a couple family trees, there's, uh, an illuminated Bible page somewhere in there. Kinda whatever you want."

[aucourant]

Snatching the book up with a slight flourish, Connor turned it around and flipped it open. He expected to see the usual sort of bland stuff. The marks of someone fresh out of school who hadn't quite found their footing yet. No style, no voice. So he flipped rather quickly, waiting to get bored. But at some point that tipped and he realized what he was looking at. This wasn't just typography, this was art. He found himself flipping back again and going through it more slowly.

"Well, we were just looking for someone who knew typography…" he said, his head still down in his book as he moved over to his desk. There he dropped the book so he could plant one hand on the desk and focus on the work a little better. "...we were expecting someone more--" he made a vague gesture without looking up, "--I dunno, digital. Rendered. That sort of thing. But this...this is all done by hand. Old school. Not just text slapped onto stuff." Then he looked up at Pen, actually looking at him now. He looked like he should be fresh out of school. Maybe even still an intern. "How old are you again?"

[inkingfeathers]

"I know. I'm older than I look," he said, wry and resigned, brushing the question off with a lot—a lot—of practice. "I can do rendered if that's what you're hoping for, but I guess I am pretty old school. Self-taught. I've been doing it by hand a lot longer than anything else, you know, when the technology wasn't around, so that's still what feels the most natural."

There were old, ancient reasons wrapped up in why Pen didn't consider himself an artist, archaic rationales that wouldn't even make sense to most people in the modern age, especially with the evidence right there, so he never argued anymore when people called his work art.

"But if it's not what you're looking for..." He trailed off with a little shrug and a smile. No hard feelings, he was only out a train ticket, and he'd gotten some decent work out of the trip. Maybe he'd spend a little extra time in Chicago anyway, see the new (to him) sights of the last 50-odd years.