Wow!
A little while back, Hilary approached me about doing some work for her place of business. That place of business happens to be the City of Kitchener, so of course I said yes right away. Obviously I also think Hilary is awesome, so that helped a little too.

What has ended up coming out of this is some of my favourite work I've done to date.

The City, via Hilary, has essentially let me create whatever I thought suited each of these posters, with a little guidance of course.

It's been a very satisfying project to work on, and I can't wait to see each element out in the wild. I really tried to make each have a bit of it's own personality, while still tying in with a greater whole.

I really hope that people like them, and that they help get people out to the awesome events that Hilary is facilitating in Downtown Kitchener. I've been proud of (almost) everything I've done, but there's a certain extra sort of pride that comes out of working for the city you live in. I really hope this ends up leading to further collaboration in the future.

There's still one more to come (the regular King Street Art Market), but I just can't sit on them any longer. I'm too excited, and just had to share the series as is!

Marc booked his old friends Absolutely Free (formerly DD/MM/YYYY) to play at the Starlight on April 11, and I was pretty excited (and nervous, because they're awesome) to do a poster for the show. Then the second act fell through, just as another of Marc's old friends Leon was asking about getting a show for his new band Dusted. Dusted just happens to be a project of Leon (who has done some amazing work over the years) and Brian Borcherdt, from Holy Fuck (who I love), so the nervousness just rose. 

Not knowing Dusted or Rituals too well (but liking what I checked out), I focussed on what I would most want to do for Absolutely Free. I started thinking of how their music made me feel. What I kept coming back to was a feeling of unease, of not knowing what a song might do next. I wanted to create a poster that might impart a sense of unease itself. Optical illusions seemed the easiest way to do that. I chose to work with the type of illusion I did because it mostly moves when you're not looking directly at it, and doesn't when you are looking right at it. Makes me uneasy that's for sure.

I really liked the end result (which doesn't always happen, believe me!). I liked it so much, I made a lock screen for my phone out of the optical illusion part. Then I figured I'd share it, just in case anyone was interested, and an iphone version too, you can find them below.

Iphone 4 wallpaper (1280x1920/640x960)

Galaxy S2 wallpaper (960x1600/480x800) - click image for full size

One other thing, I recently (thanks to Chris Collins) quietly shifted bearface.ca over to being a half-populated (my fault) website with a link to my blog, rather than just my blog. I hope people like it, and it makes me seem a little more professional. Big thanks to Chris for that one, he's a great guy to know.

Photo from jennataylr

2012 has been a big year around here. The last half got so busy, it's hard to even remember what happened in the first half, but I'll give a shot at some highlights.

January saw BRFC products going on sale at Dots & Loops in Lunenburg, NS. It's an amazing looking shop, and I couldn't be happier to be selling there. My relationship with Dots & Loops also ultimately resulted in BRFC getting the attention of and then going on sale at Scout in Toronto. I'd been thinking of trying to get into a store in Toronto for awhile, and think it's funny that my Nova Scotia connection helped bring that around. Jenna and I got to visit Scout very briefly recently and I am dying to go back.

In April, I brought Aaron Draplin to town to give a talk. I've been following him for years, and was super excited to get to meet him and hear him talk. The fact that I made it happen myself made it even better.

In July we got our puppy, Finnegan. And everything kind of changed in various ways. It kind of became hard to figure out how to work everything in, but things are smoothing out.

In August, two of my favourite people got married to each other. I got to design and print their wedding invitations. I really enjoyed working on the project for them, and was very happy with how they turned out. And the wedding itself was amazing, of course.

In September and October, the Princess ran the design film series I've always wanted to book, which was really exciting to see.

 

Eventually we buckled down and got to work on new Christmas BRFC products for the winter Stitch n Kitsch sale. With new pillows, and banners, and lots of help from Jenna's mom, we ended up having our best sale yet, which felt really good.

And through all of that I was still working on posters and other stuff for all kinds of different people. The last part of this year became my busiest one yet, design-wise. A big part of that was that I received a number of requests for logo design work. Some of it just started coming out recently, so I'm really excited to get to share them...

The Grad House at UW renovated over the summer, and I was asked to work on a new logo for them. I have some fond memories of going to see bands play at the Grad House, so I was honoured to be asked to do this work for them. After a couple different ideas based on things we'd talked about, Henry from the Grad House asked me to do just one more, whatever I wanted, and this is what I came up with. Glad it ended up being the one.

While working on that, another of different projects came up. One of them was this design for local architect, Graham Whiting. It was a little scary to work on a redesign for a very personal business like this, but I had a good feeling that we had similar tastes, and was pretty optimistic about how it would all turn out. The circle is the primary mark we came up with, and in the end I put together the smaller, secondary mark to compliment it, as it can be handy to have the option for different applications.

As soon as there was talk of food trucks in Waterloo, I knew I wanted to design for one. That chance came up when my friend Brad decided to start Schmuck'n Gourmet/The Schmuck Truck. I designed the original Schmuck'n Gourmet knife/tomato logo, and it has since morphed into what you see on the truck. It just started making appearances around town, and it's pretty cool to see it out there. The food I've eaten off of it is great too!

Last but not least is the Taco Farm logo. I think it's still a little while before this guy really gets out there, but I am super excited about it. The people involved are awesome, and it's bringing tacos to Uptown. More to come on this one in the future, but I definitely had to mention it here.

I'm sure there's a tonne of stuff I've missed here, but it's an overview. A big year for sure.

Coming up in 2013, I should have more time away from my day job to focus on my own stuff. Look for bearface.ca to finally become a real site, BRFC products to finally return to etsy, possibly a whole new project, and whatever else gets thrown at me. Looking forward to all of it.