Monday sketchbook: Memorial Day

Memorial Day always reminds me of visiting relatives and hearing stories from our family history. I thought it would be interesting to transfer that concept to the folks over at Zarahemla Times.

I think it's gonna be a long, long time

Yes, the last three days were a set up for this cartoon. It also brings us to the end of our celebration of Transportation Safety Month. Yee-hah!

It's just a click away

What? Is that a French flag in the background? It wasn't meant to be -- I was just thinking red, white and blue. And yes, that is an iMac (even though they didn't have those in WWII). The original poster that this was based on had a typewriter - and who knows what those are nowadays?

This was the first big pitch we did to use the Internet for DMV transactions. It was relatively new technology for state government way back then, so we minimized the risk by starting with downloadable forms and answers to questions (however, you'd be amazed at how many people clog up the lines at the DMV just trying to get those things!).

In the ensuing years, we wised up and got a much easier URL: www.OregonDMV.com.

Up in the sky!

This second DMV poster was inspired by one from the Royal Canadian Air Force.

Rosie the customer service agent

The WWII-inspired poster from last week reminded me of some others that I did, this time for the Oregon DMV. The idea was to get people to use alternate methods of doing business rather than going in to the office.

Learning curve

They have to go someplace to learn how to set up detours, don't they?

Keeping you in suspension

Structural engineers have this thing called the bridge formula that they use to determine how much weight a bridge can bear*. Whenever I heard our engineers talk about the bridge formula, for some reason I always thought of a recipe -- you know, something along the lines of Julia Child doing a show dedicated to single span arches. The humor in this one is aimed at a certain demographic, so don't worry. If you're a bridge engineer with an affinity for French cooking, you'll be totally ROFL. Trust me.

*Calvin's dad totally lied on this one. They don't keep driving bigger and bigger trucks over a bridge until it collapses and then weigh the truck. That'd be silly!