We’ve had a name change lately, and as much as I love our ThPM logo, it’s time for a new look. We need a monkfish. A monkfish with a sense of humor…and a tonsure…and maybe prayer beads. So if you are a graphic artist, or a connoisseur of all things comic, or even if you just like to doodle, give it your best shot and send us a monkfish. We’ll pick our favorite and send the lucky winner 100 bucks as a “thank you.” What do you say?

So here’s what you need to know:

1. Monkfish are funny. They have big mouths and enormous heads and one of those things that dangles off their foreheads as a fishing lure.
   
2. Why are we Monkfish Abbey? Well, we are neo-monastic, but we don’t want people to take us too serious. And how can anyone take a Monkfish seriously? We liked the concept of being monks, and the whole “fisher of men” thing works with our habit of “extending the loving hand of Christ to the world,” and there’s that great, overused Christian tradition of the Jesus fish. Plus, the monkfish is often referred to as “the poor man’s lobster,” which I liked, because it has this feeling of “oh, everyone can get in on this.” Which is I think is what it must have felt like to be around Jesus sometimes. (Although I like the tag line “taste’s like chicken” ever so much better than “taste like lobster.”
   
3. Our local neighborhood, Fremont, has this tremendous parade every year, and once they made an art car in the form of a giant monkfish. That just sort of sealed the deal for us.
   

So, here’s the thing. We need something sort of ancienty looking. Like these figures from old maps that read “monsters lie here” and had sea serpents in the uncharted corners.

We need something that connotes monkishness as well as the actually monkfish. (I wasn’t kidding about tonsure and prayer beads. Check out this logo from monkfish books for example.)

Ideally, I’d like to animate the logo a little so that when you clicked on it it would turn it’s head and move it’s mouth and say (in a croaky voice) MONKFISH! (’Course I know nothing about animating, or programming in flash…so I may be wishful thinking here.)

Think you’ve got our vibe? Draw us a monkfish and send it to urbanabbess *A T* monkfish-abbey *D0t* org. You’ve got ’til April 30th and there’s a $100 in it for our favorite. Have fun!

Glub, Glub.

The Urban Abbess