Author Archives: Sheryl Checkman

About Sheryl Checkman

Sheryl Checkman is an award-winning designer with more than 25 years' experience in applying innovative yet pragmatic solutions to the full range of communications and design challenges. Before opening Checkman Design, Sheryl was Vice President & Manager, Design Services, for the public relations agency Burson-Marsteller from 1981-1992. Prior to that she was an Art Director at the The Barton Gillet Company, a marketing communications firm. Sheryl graduated from Cornell University and attended a Masters program in Communications Design at Pratt Institute as well as a three-month design program at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. She graduated from the High School of Music & Art in New York City. Sheryl is an avid skier and scuba diver. She swims, plays tennis, practices yoga and enjoys taking pictures, both above and below the water. She adds her creative signature to her photographs by creating Digital Fine Art which she currently exhibits in her online gallery. She recently launched a line of inspirational sports-themed T-shirts under the name Life is Balance®. In addition to her design work, Sheryl also creates custom photomontages for a variety of corporate and consumer clients.

It’s 5:00 Somewhere!

Posted on by
Reply
No Gravatar

I have this wall clock that has hung on the wall of my kitchen for more years than I can remember. It was designed by Dietrich Lubs and made by Braun, and is so well designed in it’s simplicity, that I never even thought of replacing it. That is until one day I noticed that it was 5:00 all day long. I tried changing the batteries. But 5:00 never became 5:30. I thought maybe new batteries were bad, since they came from the fridge (I heard somewhere that they last longer in there), but I swapped out several others and still no time change. I even tried taking the clock apart to see whether there was some easy fix (yeah right, like it would be that easy!). I noticed that there are some very tiny wires that go into what must be the clock mechanism and that one of the wires seemed to be attached to nothing in particular. Ah ha! Now that I could see what was wrong, I tried to see if I could get the wire to go where I thought it should. No luck!

I really like this clock and would love to see it back up on my wall working. I can’t tell you how many times I look for the time on the blank wall where it should be. I miss my clock and would love to find a service center or someone handy who could fix it!

It's always 5:00 here!

It's always 5:00 here!

I just found some information on this clock at 50 Years Braun Design Innovation
It is called the ABW 30 Wall clock.

Woodstock: Has it Really Been 40 Years?

Posted on by
Reply
No Gravatar

Woodstock copy

It’s hard to believe that the 40th anniversary of Woodstock is this summer. I was 14 during the summer of 1969, spending the summer at Pineacres Camp in the town of Wallkill, NY. A little known fact is that back then, Wallkill was supposed to be the site of the Woodstock Festival. I remember that me and my bunkmates were all excited to think that right in our backyard there would be this wonderful happening concert! Oh the plans we had… to camp out and listen to all the great bands! Much to our disappointment the venue was changed to Max Yasgur’s 600 acre farm in the town of Bethel. It seems the folks of Wallkill just didn’t want a huge rock concert taking over the town.

And so Woodstock happened at what is now called Bethel Woods and I remained in Wallkill dreaming about what it would have been like. I don’t know if I would have lasted all three days of rain, mud and rock and roll but it sure would have been a great story to have been able to tell.

My Woodstock Anniversary design is at the top of this post. Click here to view this design on t-shirts, mugs, hats, tote bags, buttons and many other cool gift items. Peace, Love and Flower Power!

Beach Art

Posted on by
Reply
No Gravatar

Starting Point

Starting Point

The End Result
Treasure Chest & a bottle of Rum

Treasure Chest & a bottle of Rum

Have you ever gone to the beach at night when the moon is bright and drew pictures in the sand? This is called beach art. The concept is pretty simple: Someone starts the image with a few lines drawn in the sand and then each person has a certain amount of time (not much) to add to the lines to create a picture. You never know where this will lead until the last line is drawn. This past Saturday night was such a night for me and a couple of my friends who were in visiting from Montreal. The moon was bright, the breeze was delightful and the water was warm. These are the results of our beach art, from two headed monsters to pirate booty, we let our imagination run wild and in doing so had a lot of fun!