Press
Honors Welcome, but Address Is Wrong
Monday, February 27, 2006
Albuqerque Journal - by Rosalie Rayburn
New Mexico is frequently mistaken for Mexico, but for New York City?
Albuquerque design firm Ripe Inc. owner and founder Len Romano was browsing for inspiration in the latest Print's Regional Annual, when he came upon something familiar— one of his own logo designs in the chapter for New York designers.
New York-based Print magazine runs an annual graphic design competition and uses the publication to showcase work from designers nationwide. Winning entries— about 1,000 out of more than 20,000 submitted— are organized by region.
The Ripe design that appeared as if it was from the New York chapter was a logo for the Slate Street Cafe in Downtown Albuquerque, produced by Ripe's designer Amy Henderson.
Romano had entered it in the design competition for the 2005 annual but it didn't show up in Print's "Rest of the Southwest" section, which includes entries from designers in Arizona, Oklahoma and New Mexico.
"We were slightly deflated to discover that we hadn't made it into Print's Regional Annual this year," Romano wrote in an e-mail to the Journal.
It was another three months before he accidentally found the Slate Street logo among the winning entries from New York.
"Print Design HQ acknowledged the error, apologized, and promised to print a formal apology in the next issue," Romano's e-mail said.
Geographic mixups about New Mexico occur all the time, said Walter Lopez, managing editor of New Mexico magazine, a monthly published by the state Tourism Department to promote the state.
One of the most famous cases, Lopez said, was in 1996: A Santa Fe man called Atlanta to get tickets for volleyball at the Summer Olympics there. When they heard he was from New Mexico, they said he needed to work through the international office.
The incident prompted Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M. to inform fellow senators on the Senate floor, "New Mexico, yes, that large span of land between the oil wells of Texas and the saguaros of Arizona, is in the United States."
Lopez receives up to 20 anecdotes a week by phone, e-mail or letter, relating misperceptions about New Mexico. The magazine has printed the accounts in a column called "One of our 50 is missing" since the mid-1970s.
