Remember how much fun I had last November designing the directionals for the Vegas Valley Book Festival as part of a cooperative branding effort by the Las Vegas AIGA Chapter Advisory Board? Meeting my favorite author Neil Gaiman (who was the opening keynote) was the icing on the cake on an overall great experience and I am so looking forward to this year.

Well, it looks like I made a bit of an impression. I just got invited by Richard Hooker from City of Las Vegas Cultural Affairs to sit on the planning committee for the 2009 Festival. I think they are going to go with my theme idea for this year " The Love Affair with the Many Lives of Words: Romance in the Pages." Not just sappy, pulp, Harlequin-type romance or silly chick-lit, but the great tragic tales of unrequitted love and star-crossed lovers such as Tristan and Isolde, myths and legends from every culture and of course many works by Shakespeare as well as stories of the things people do or do not do for love, and the awesome power of the love of country or ideals over self-preservation. You could almost say that love is at the bottom of all things in our lives. No wonder it has been present in our writings since we first learned to make marks on cave walls.

I am just bursting with fun things that can be included in the festival (inviting Shakespeare in the Park actors to perform selected scenes in the open air Centennial Plaza perhaps) and oh! the wellspring of great images that theme conjures! Red roses made of magazine pages and Juliet on the balcony clothed in a gown made from the printed word.

What does the possible theme bring to your mind?