Category: Fashion

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Welcome.

Thank you for visiting ZENECIST.com

A Zenecist™ (my word) is someone who is “a light in the moment.” It’s also a soon-to-be retail and lifestyle hub, now in a soft opening as we ideate and source products.

My ‘second career’ after running a brand marketing and design agency the last 34 years, during the warmer months I’m a gardener locally on a part-time basis. I enjoy the work and offer essential gardening services from planning to planting to weeding, soil make-up/pH, and maintenance. I will have an exciting new offering in the kitchen-to-table table gardening space coming in early Fall. This system features a fully self-contained kitchen- or pantry-ready growing cabinet, now the rage in Europe.

Currently ZENECIST has two year-round components.

ZENECIST™ | High-Level. Laid-Back. Lifestyle.™ is an online retail business now under construction. Initially we’ll be testing products and different categories on an eBay store. As I learn, I’ll be building out the e-Comm module of this site, with a planned Grand Opening of ZENECIST™ online shopping scheduled for late 2024.

DEFLECTOR™ | Everything Happens All The Time™ is a Medium.com publication randomly ranting on the art of style & well-being and living our best lives.

My goal with ZENECIST is to do some good, live an active lifestyle, and have some fun. Your insight, comments, and help are welcome as ZENECIST builds out. Add a comment to a blog post or go here.

Cheers! T –

PS: I also run my current Apple Music playlists in the sidebar: Spring, Summer, Fall & Winter (not an affiliate) for your perusal and amusement, and mine too.

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New Logo Design Created for ZENECIST™

As the primary brand stakeholder the Zenecist™ logo reflects my sensibilities based upon my contention at a brand’s core The Difference is You.™

(V2 Feb 2024) We’re pleased to present the revised Logo Mark Design for ZENECIST, Tom Lanen’s new e-commerce adventure in lifestyle products.

The first element of a new design system, it uses Tom’s Zen Sailboat™ logomark design, which had also been a part of his erstwhile brand marketing firm’s logo, but which he has long considered central to his personal karmic brand. In fact, for his 70th birthday he had the Zen Sailboat made into first body art on his arm (3cm diameter), explaining he’s “either a Christian-Buddhist, a Buddhist-Christian or none/all of the above.”

Tom Lanen's "zen sailboat" body art
A tattoo on others, but get one and it’s ‘body art’–this is mine.

The design mark features Futura, a legacy font Tom loves because of its crisp and unfettered letterform, and a complementary purple and gray palette reminiscent of the first logo he created for Thomas Marketing Services 34 years ago.

The mark is being used on all ZENECIST online properties, products and merchandising. The design can also incorporate the revised ZENECIST tag line: High-Level. Laid-Back. Lifestyle.™

Stay tuned!

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On Holiday: Celebrating The Best Day(s) of My Life

Hello & welcome to this week’s (week of 10.17.22) issue of Deflector™, the Art of Style & Well-Being for Men of Age™, a TMSC publication. This past 6 weeks I’ve posted On Style or On Being, each with thoughts and insights on how as active older humans we can lead a more satisfying lifestyle and mitigate some of the irrational aspects of aging. If you missed last week’s edition, On Being: Aging & Self-Doubt, you can read it here

My son first-born son John (left), celebrating his 30 birthday in NYC with his friend Kori, who’s in for vacation from Prague.

1 Reason This Will Be My Shortest Post Ever

Vol 2, №5

It’s been one of those weeks. You see, along with rethinking goals and content in Deflector and how I present it going forward (such as trying a video series), I’m celebrating the 30th anniversary of the first greatest day of my life.

The day my oldest son, John Thomas, was born.

Every year since, I always get this overwhelming feeling of near-euphoria, of extreme well-being when the sun is at this October declination and playoff major league baseball is on the TV. You see, we had a game on in the birthing suite, but damned if I saw I pitch; I only have some white noise audio of the announcers in the back of my memory.

Because front and center, well, a miracle. And at age 40, it filled me with awe. And to experience awe is to experience wonder. Absolutely breathtaking.

And easily the best day of my life, only to be matched by the second best day of my life, 5 years later, when my twins were born.

So, feeling these deep-seated emotions again, and not having to answer to a time clock, I’ve basked in the joy of it all, and didn’t try to fill my dance card too full. In fact, it’s been a holiday week for all intents and purposes. It’s been wonderful.

Read More on Deflector, the Art of Style & Well-Being for Men of Age, A TMSC publication hosted at Medium.com/Deflector (this is a Free Read friend link)

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On Style: Defining Your Look

How The “Ted Lanen Tie Buying Strategy” Can Help Men of Age (Re)Define Their Personal Brand Image

Vol 2, №3

My dad, Ted (Teuvo) Lanen (1926–2008) was an Electrical Engineer and Tufts ROTC grad who did his time in a couple large corporations before becoming a Sales Engineer for an electric process and comfort heating equipment manufacturer’s representative he’d come to own. This was back in the day when Reddy Kilowatt (created in 1926), was a cartoon image many of the then nascent electrical utility businesses used in their marketing.

My hippie brand, circa 1971

Despite Ted’s hopes, I simply could not imagine being a more boring business; its image wasn’t even droll, which implies some sort of amusement. And there was nothing amusing about it to me, the oldest son of three in the family, especially since I was (and resented) the first line of parental discipline, a throw-back to my dad’s upbringing as an only son of strict Finnish immigrants — it wasn’t pretty. And as the oldest son and trail blazer for my younger brothers, I pretty much rebelled against any sense of work or leisure fashion he might have worn. I can only recall them as ‘short-sleeve shirts with a crappy tie’ uniforms of the middle-class in the latter 1960s, the status quo, for which I had no appetite.

It got worse as I grew into adulthood and became a card carrying member of the Woodstock Generation. You see, long hair had entered the scene and my dad’s intolerance for it only made me grow it longer. My attitude became increasingly combative; and my style more radical. All of my ‘Swellesley’ preppie-wear tendencies fell by the wayside in favor of the more outrageous tie-dye influenced styles found in counter-culture boutiques.

Read more on Deflector, the Art of Style & Well-Being for Men of Age, A TMSC publication hosted at Medium.com/Deflector

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