Save-A-Zoa

Participate in the Logozoa Preservation Program by photographing your stickers in your home or in the wild and sending them to me at . Be forewarned, though—one contributor reports that “Logozoa are as addictive as potato chips, French fries, or M&Ms.”

Breeding Guidelines

Habitat: Logozoa do well in all manner of habitats, from any old place around the house to exotic tourist destinations to locations that are just plain weird. They are comfortable taking on all manner of roles from social commentary to autobiographical aside. They are at home with the silly, the sardonic, or the serioso. The settings can be carefully staged or captured on the spur of the moment. Sometimes Logozoa will even escape from the confines of their stickers and commandeer alternative means of textual transmission. Logozoa thrive on interesting relationships between their texts and their surroundings. These relationships are usually best fostered through creative forethought on the part of the breeder, though some have had success with randomly situating their Logozoa and observing the connections that emerge spontaneously.

Though nothing beats the energy of real-world engagement when a Logozoan is captured in a live setting, a fascinating virtual subculture of Zoa has emerged from the Photoshop skills of breeders who digitally paste the texts into their photographs.

Image Size: When you bring new Logozoa into the world with your digital camera for the Logozoo, please keep in mind that they are displayed in the Zoo at a resolution no greater than 640 pixels in either dimension. The standard dimensions of 640 by 480 (in either landscape or portrait format) produce the best results, though the Zoo can accommodate inhabitants of unusual proportions. Please send photos at their original resolution. If you can reduce your photos to 640-by-480 resolution and compress them without loss of quality to less than 100K in size, please send the reduced versions as well. Otherwise I can resize them. The text of the Logozoan should be legible when viewed onscreen at the correct size. If you cannot adequately capture the creature’s habitat and the creature itself in a single photo, you can take two pictures—one long shot and one close-up that shows the legible text. I’ll keep the twins together in the Zoo so that visitors can mouse over the long shot to view the close-up. Just be sure that the twin shots have the same dimensions so that the rollover will work properly. If you have a macro setting on your camera, you can use it to prevent the text in the close-up from appearing blurry.

New Strains: Clever breeding techniques have produced some interesting variations on the standard strain of sticker photographs. The long-shot/close-up rollover feature has spawned two-frame animations. There is even a short Flash movie starring a Logozoan. Other new strains of the creatures are expected to evolve.

Background: Just like the rest of us, Logozoa like to know where they came from. Please send along the name of the city, state (or province/county), and country where each photo was taken, to give it some context. Any other information you may wish to provide about the location will be eagerly digested. If the image has any personal significance for you, or if there were any interesting circumstances surrounding your taking of the picture, please let me know. Finally, feel free to give your critter a name.

Visiting Rights: Of course, we encourage you to visit your Zoa in their new home as often as you like. If you wish to link to your creatures from your own Web site, use the Permanent URL that appears below each image in the Logozoo.