The poster has arrived! It’s really cool to see it in print. Available directly through the Mt. Airy Learning Tree (MALT), you can drop by their office on Greene Street in Mt. Airy and pick one up immediately. They’re also being sold at the Weavers Way Coop and through my website.

They are $20 each, and half of that goes directly to MALT’s Make This Our Home building fund. They are looking to raise about $230,000 to buy the building where their offices have been for the last 10 years. This is a great community organization so if you have any ties to Mt. Airy, or know somebody who does, get them this poster as a gift.

The “Signs You’re In Mt. Airy” poster is almost ready to be printed! I had to make a few revisions to the initial design. It seems I had confused a boundary and included several businesses that weren’t in the city, let alone in Mt. Airy. Those had to be removed and replaced with others. I had some help along the way from the staff at the Mt. Airy Learning Tree, providing suggestions and even securing a large “Mt. Airy Philadelphia” sign in their office. I had, in fact, found a similar sign still attached to a telephone pole near my childhood home and that is the one on the poster. Another friend of mine reminded me of the license plate with a smiley face and “I like Mt. Airy” written on it. So I went in search of a car with one of those plates. Wouldn’t you know there were 3 cars on my old block with that plate!

The poster will be proofed and approved in the next week or so. Then on to the printer and shipped back to Mt. Airy Learning Tree and available for sale.

Thank you to all who have provided support and suggestions throughout this project!

I grew up in Mt. Airy, a neighborhood in the northwestern part of Philadelphia. It’s close to center city yet feels very suburban. It’s a progressive area with one of the country’s oldest co-op markets, Weavers Way, and wonderfully integrated. Our block was quiet enough to ride my bike in the street; there was room to run and play behind the house; it’s very family friendly.

My latest project was born out of something I was doing for work. We’re co-sponsoring a photo contest of Mt. Airy to use the winning images in a 2010 desk calendar. Sales of this calendar will benefit (modestly) a local organization where “neighbors teach neighbors,” the Mt. Airy Learning Tree (MALT). MALT has just started a capital campaign to buy their building, trying to raise $230,000 by next September. I was out on the main street, visiting businesses to promote the contest. I had my own camera with me and started to photograph the business signs. I was thinking about a collage for the calendar cover.

A few days went by and I was continuing to promote the photo contest and photographing business signs. I hit upon a great idea – create a collage of these signs – business and otherwise and sell a poster to help MALT raise more money toward their goal. I’ve worked on the collage for the past several days, using 86 images of different signs from around Mt. Airy. Today I had a version to share with the director of MALT. We’ve been emailing back and forth about pricing, how much of that would go to MALT, and how best to promote the poster to sell a bunch.

Although not quite ready to make that announcement, we’re very close to making this all public. Stay tuned. In the meantime, here’s the poster as it stands right now.