Partner Profiles: The Woman Behind Kismet’s Logo

As we celebrate our 10th year of service to New England youth, we are taking the opportunity to recognize many of the volunteers and donors who have made our work possible. For our first installment, we meet Janina Lamb, creator of Kismet’s logo and one of the organization’s founding board members. Here is her story:

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My presence at the beginning of Kismet Rock Foundation was directly related to my friendship with Mike Jewell. It was his baby, and I got on board (in every sense of the word) to help out. I’m not ‘a climber’ though I experienced enough climbing under Mike’s wing to understand its power and beauty: physical prowess and grace independent of speed or competition, serious interpersonal communication and responsibility, serious interior personal communication and responsibility, and intense natural beauty. (As an artist I always wished I could be tied into the side of a cliff for several hours so that I could make paintings of the rocks)
Love those rocks.

For me, being on Kismet’s founding board was a learning experience in the raging glory of boards and organizations, a situation I mostly try to avoid. As is often the case, the biggest challenge for a group of people in creating something together is the group of people. And yet a group with a common goal has a view and vision that is vastly superior to a one-angle view.

I don’t remember all the permutations of the name search, except that the name Prism Rock Foundation was being seriously considered until everyone decided it sounded too much like Prison Rock. The name Kismet came to Mike in a kismet-like way.

I felt that the logo arrived in a kismet-like way also. As the artist/graphic designer person in the group, I took on that job, and I don’t even remember the ideas I was playing with before I arrived at a logo idea which resonated. That is pretty much how the logo design process works . . . you muck around in a big field of ideas until the right idea floats down from the heavens into your lap. At which point you still have to refine it, but you have grasped the heart of it.

I’m amazed, and not at all surprised, at how successful Kismet has been and continues to be. It was clearly a heartfelt impulse for many people at the start, and that mojo has carried forward to this day. It has benefited not only the young people for whom its benefits are intended, but everyone who has come into contact with it, and Mount Washington Valley itself.

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Janina Lamb has called New Hampshire home since she arrived here in 1972. It was lasting love at first sight. She has spent her time since then raising five children, using words and pictures to communicate, and looking out the window at old granite hills made
ever new by changing light and weather.

Through her business, Lamb & Lion Studio, she helps people express themselves and their projects in words and pictures, and she expresses herself with a line of posters, note cards and bumper stickers. One of these days, you will be able to get lots more information by going to her website, www.lamblionstudio.com. Until that happy day, if you would like more information about Lamb & Lion Studio, please email [email protected].