For our summer banner (which went up two days early because the Solstice occurred on Sunday), we asked Joy Stauber, who has been designing our banners for a couple of years now, to think about Summer and Excellence. While Joy has been designing a seasonal banner every three months for tompeters.com, this time we asked her to also consider Excellence, for Excellence is what this site is all about. Of course it hearkens back to the book Tom co-authored with Bob Waterman. It’s an idea that launched Tom’s speaking career and also an idea that at some level overwhelmed Tom, so that he found himself shying away from it for a long while.
To quote Tom from an April, 2006 blog post:
I got so damn sick of “excellence,” so worn out by “excellence” … for years after “the book” became a hit. Distanced myself from it. Ran from it.
But no longer. Excellence is back in a big way. If you’ve looked at any of Tom’s slide presentations lately, you’ll see that the first slide always includes: “Excellence. Always.”
When Joy began to think about Excellence (which hereafter will always be capitalized at this site) and images for a banner, she thought about the wheel, and when she thinks wheels, she thinks bikes. (As a fan of bicycles myself, I’m glad that the banner begins with a bike in motion.) Joy discovered the black and white spiral while exploring the Golden Mean, also known as the Golden Ratio, and she liked the energy of it. (Cathy’s concern: “When you scroll down our front page, the black spiral seems to pulse in and out. I hope we don’t cause any seizures.”) Yes, we all here at tompeters.com hope we don’t cause any seizures, either, unless you’re seized by an urge to sit bolt upright and realize that you can begin right now to always be Excellent.
Flowers are Excellent, of course, but especially this flamboyant one. (No meek and mild-mannered flowers here.) (Recall also that Tom suggests not cutting back on your flower budget even during this recession.) And what could be more Excellent than fresh-grown garden tomatoes? From the earth, pictured next. As for the star, isn’t Excellent work always rewarded with a star? (Maybe not in real life, but certainly in school. But maybe real-life Excellence should be rewarded with stars, too?)
Joy likes to include a silhouetted character in her banners. You may or may not think it’s Tom, flying a kite. (His hair has never been that long in our recollection.) Think Ben Franklin and the discovery of electricity, think wind power. The words in the speech balloon clearly are Tom’s, part of his new clarion call, “If not EXCELLENCE, WHAT? If not EXCELLENCE now, WHEN? ” After that, we move on to the sunset, our Excellent reward at the end of each day.
That’s the lowdown behind the new Summer/Excellence banner.
With that, we here wish all of you a wonderful, warm, relaxing, and Excellent summer. (As always to our friends in the southern hemisphere, best wishes for an Excellent winter.)