I finally started collecting the Complete Peanuts series, with the 1950-54 set pictured above. I'm pretty sure this is my favourite era of Peanuts, so I can't wait to re-read them. The books and box are beautiful, not surprisingly, since they're designed by Seth. His lettering is perfect for it, and the vignettes he used in the opening and closing pages really emphasize the seriousness that underlines Peanuts, as well as give the series a distinctly Seth touch. 
(edit: I was just reading the above linked info about the series in which Seth is quoted: "I want to emphasize the sophistication of Schulz’s work by creating a package that is both austere and direct. I would like to try to reflect the quiet and melancholy of the strip in a package that hopefully, shows the proper amount of respect for Mr. Schulz." Obviously, I think he nailed it.)
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You may or may not know this already, but I rarely ever wash my jeans, and I wear the same pair almost every day. Turns out I should have done this as a 'study' rather than my regular practice, 'cause I could have ended up in the news. I know people wash their jeans more than I do, and wear them less than I do, but the idea of washing them every day, or even every week is ridiculous to me. Jeans are rugged and durable, so why not treat them that way? Good enough for miners to wear every day, good enough for me to wear every day.
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Almost every designer I follow shared this video in one way or another, so I thought I should pass it on too: The House Industries trailer. So much awesomeness.
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From Julia N. on facebook: Generic Dr. Pepper gallery. I love store brand/generic sodas. Dr. Pepper versions are, of course, the best since Dr. Pepper is awesome, and the names they come up with to evoke the original are usually pretty entertaining. Dr. Thunder, Dr. A+, Dr. Pop, etc. The names are amazing! Personal favourite, by name and experience: Dr. Smooth.
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Anson tweeted about a blog that discusses user interface design that seems pretty interesting: Little Big Details. I LOVE this kind of stuff, because these really are the little touches that make the user experience so much better if they're done right, and ruin it if they're not. When Google Labs announced this new favicon tweak I got really excited. It also helped me clean up my inbox, as apparently it doesn't could when you have more than 20 unread emails. I feverishly went through everything and got down from 30+ to 18 , so now I can see what I've got unread in a very small spot, and I have less unread. Look how that little UI tweak helped me! Now if I could manage to have less tabs open...
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Herman Melville has 25 words for Beard. Personal favorite? "Long, trailing moss hanging from the bough of some aged oak." At least I think that's it. There are some real good ones in there.
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Camper Kart and Camper Bike. Neat, cool and clever.

Getting a bit more work done. Some yoga posters, some ads, and that poster up above. Tomorrow I finally get down to work on wedding invitations for some friends. Looking forward to that, at the same time that it's a little scary to do work for friends. Not as scary as doing my own invitations will be, but still scary.
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The National Post shows some of the cover design process of Seth. Pretty cool to see. I can never say enough how much I love Seth's lettering and style. So nice. (from Drawn)
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Just in Time, Or A Short History of Production. Amazing looking art installation. I'd love to see footage of it running.
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Blerg. I was supposed to get more done today, but so far I have not. Fridays off always disappear way too quickly.

I bought a bird house from Home Sense the other day. For awhile now I've really liked bird houses that are designed to look like people houses. Home Sense had a bunch, and at fair prices, so I went ahead and got one. Nice little green house. Now I just have to figure out where to put it...

I'm happy about the new house, but now that I've seen these ones by Jeff Canham and Luke Bartels, I want one of them so badly! They're so cute, and clever. And they make me think of Seth's City of Dominion.
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Speaking of Seth, I swear that this book cover from 1946 or something that I spotted at the book sale the other day could have been designed by him. Particularly the grain elevator building thing on the right.
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Speaking of Jeff Canham, have you seen his work before? His lettering work is amazing. Big fan for sure.
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Cool kids items. Love the first three items there. The trike actually converts to a bike with a penny farthing-esque vibe. The boat is just super cute, and imagine seeing a kid pedal that airplane around!
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I don't know if I think Puma's Clever Little Bag is awesome or terrible. Good call on the environmental front for most people, but I love shoe boxes, and always keep them, convinced I will find some use for them at some point. I guess I don't really need any more though, but then, do I need another re-usable bag, particularly a shoe box sized one?

I'm still on the fence...
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Well this doesn't seem to make any sense: When Ontarians Conserve Power, Wind Farms Will Be Shut Down. What? Money wise, I can see how that's tempting, but it still seems ridiculous.
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Wow, if there was a place like Blood & Bandages in K-W, I might be tempted to pay someone cut my hair for once...

Just a quick one before bed to let you know I had a great little weekend. Put the appliances back in the kitchen (equaling chicken soft tacos for dinner today!), saw Racoon Wedding (equaling getting to hang out with Tim and the guys, and get a copy of their album), and took a trip to Ikea and to St. Catherines to see Seth's Dominion City again.

Pictures of Dominion, and the Wine King float are up here, if you'd like to see them.

Pretty much the best thing that publishing companies keep doing is releasing new and impressive covers for books I already own. Sometimes, a cover redesign is actually pretty terrible (also, covers based on the movie based on the book), but much more often lately, I have been impressed by companies' choices to work with great designers and illustrators. This whole series really rises to the occasion in that regard.

Seriously, this kind of thing makes me want to re-purchase books I already own. At one point, if you had asked me what my favourite book was, I would have said White Noise, without a second's pause. It's been awhile now, and it's time for a re-read to see where it sits, but I'd so much rather read the version above than the one I currently own (actually, I probably wouldn't want to read the new version, because I wouldn't want to hurt it). I've actually been tempted for years to trade it in for this one, which was already clearly better, but this new one takes the cake!

I've been tempted by this one in store before for sure too.

And this is a book I've always questioned Jenna's ownership of, but now I want to run out and buy this version!

This one would be hard to pass up too...
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This was super-exciting for me the other day. When I started into that post I was thinking "Hey, I made a packaging related show poster, I should send it in!" And then BANG, there it was, on a blog I really enjoy. Really made me feel good. Even if I'm not that proud of that poster anymore...
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This is an impressive little piece of focused self-promotion. Seeing it inspired me in a poster I had to make recently. Not that I hadn't seen the multi-media background, colour cut out overlay before, but I kept looking at that piece and couldn't resist making this:
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This barbershop/railway museum might be just the thing that would get me to go back to having someone else cut my hair. You know, if it wasn't in Northern Ireland...
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Font memory game? Yes. I feel like I've seen something like this before, but I don't know where. I do believe that it was someone's self-promotional piece though.

See what I'm saying about self-promotion? Awesome stuff lately, I'm always talking about someone's work for themselves!
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Adorable and clever pet food packaging. Seriously, adorable.
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Here's an interesting idea that I've actually kind of thought of before. For the right price, I might consider buying one. The question is, how different is it from just having a plant in your room?
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If anyone in Toronto can get me one of these posters, I would be super grateful. Seriously. I wonder if you can get them from the zoo? You know I like my bears...
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After yet another purge, my pile of things to share is getting smaller. Too bad it also tends to get bigger every day or so...

Keepin' on.

The above picture comes from Vintagraph, a site (created by the same people as the seriously awesome Shorpy) that compiles old WPA posters. I love this one because the image at first struck me as incongruous to the message, yet at the same time, it does evoke the local through the image of the home, and the state through the image of the factory and tall buildings. Where syphilis comes in exactly I do not know, but the local and state, they're definitely there.
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I am loving this modular storage system. The colours not necessarily so much, it would be nice if they were more in line with those typical to the shipping containers they are based on, but still, they are pretty awesome. I don't know how much they cost, but you can be pretty sure that I would not be able to afford them.
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This here is a beautiful set of transistor radios on Flickr. This guy's collection must be amazing. I've only looked at a small fraction and am in awe. (from the DDC)

On a similar note, I just remembered that a friend told me this weekend that he picked up a part that should complete his repair of my vintage tube amplified suitcase record player. Looking forward to seeing that one again. He's been real awesome in fixing it for me.
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Some pretty great buildings pictured in here. I particularly like numbers 5, 6, 21 (which is actually a part of a complex that I've seen some pretty amazing pictures of), 22, 29 (shipping containers again! I love shipping container housing solutions), 30, 35 (yes, I fell in love like many others did I'm sure at the Olympics), 43, and 50 (Robot building!). That's a lot that I like, I know... There's a second page too, but I won't put you through a list of what I like of that one...
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Jenna tipped me off to this one out of an old issue of Jane yesterday. A couple of years ago, this would have been my ideal website, and I would have loved to be a writer for it. Now I'm trying to cut back on the snacks. I do have some pretty strong opinions about chips though. They even mention many of the same things that I evaluate my snacks for. Another one I've barely touched but would like to get deeper into.
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I'm loving the signs in this small flickr set. The impressive detail on the hot dog, the overload of flash and colour on the cleaners, the impressiveness of the city sign. Good stuff all of it. You really can't go wrong with anthropomorphic cannabalism in your signage, you know? (I think this is via the DDC as well...)
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A nice little vintage find on etsy. A beaufiful example of branding and sports if I've ever seen one. The style is just beautiful too.
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I've been seeing a lot of images created out of typography lately (there's a term for it, but I can't for the life of me think of it right now, maybe because I'm distracted by my need to pee...). Some are good, some not so much, but this book looks pretty great. Both the snail and the girl just look so cute, you know?

Speaking of books, we gotta get on ordering some Christmas stuff from amazon so's it gets here on time! It's almost December!
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Oh, and by the way, Seth and Chris Ware were pretty great. Chris was pretty hilarious, in his demure, self-depricating way. Seth was funny too, but a little more pretentious feeling to Chris' constant fear of sounding pretentious. I feel like the ways they said they thought about certain things are quite similar to the ways I do, which is nice to know. Chris had a presentation of a video he creatted with Ira Glass, so you know I was loving that.

EXCITED.

Jenna sent me this article from the Record today, and I only got as far as "Cambridge Galleries complements the Seth exhibitions at Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery" when I got really excited. It turned out to be even more exciting than I thought.

So yes, the amazing comic artist/illustrator/designer/letterer Seth does have work on exhibit at the KWAG (which I really should have known from their ad in the film guide). But then I found he also has work on exhibit at Render at UW (love the tagline "In the dull grey building on the other side of the tracks." Perfect for a gallery in that setting), and it sounds even better than what's at the KWAG. Awesome, right?

BUT THEN, things got even better when I saw this: Seth in Conversation with Chris Ware, in Cambridge! Chris Ware is pretty much the shit, and since, as far as I know, they're actually friends, it should be pretty great to see.

Jenna's timing on sending me that article was pretty much perfect, since it turns out that conversation is this Saturday. This is totally the kind of thing I only hear about afterward, but this time I'm actually going to get to see it (as long as I get there in time to get a seat!)!

Combine that with visiting the exhibit at the Cambridge gallery that the Record article was actually about which sounds pretty awesome, hopefully visiting the new Hespeler library in Cambridge that I'm itching to check out, catching Woodhands at the Starlight later, and then Marc & Kyle's music video DJ night at the bond after that, and Saturday is fixin' to be a pretty amazing day.